MOMENT WITH TARES OBURUMU

My guest today came upon my radar when he was announced 2022 winner of the Sillerman poetry prize. He needs no further introduction. Please, welcome, Tares Oburumu.

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So, let's begin like this: Can we meet you?

Here's Tares Oburumu. I graduated from the University of Benin, class of 20s. I majored in Philosophy. I am from Delta State, of the Ijaw extraction. I have a daughter. Her name is Sasha.

Can you tell us the meaning of your names?

Tares means love. I can't translate the Oburumu to English without robbing it of its vitality. The closest I can give is, meeting people.

Okay. How did you get into poetry?

I started reading poems at a very tender age. My father had a small library of old books, fewer than a hundred in a small cupboard, most of them were novels and books on sociology because he was studying sociology at that time in the University of Maiduguri, Borno State in northern Nigeria. There was a handful of poetry books, most especially of African writers. Christopher Okigbo's Mother Idoto, Soyinka's Telephone conversation and Kofi Awoonor's Song Of Sorrow stood tall among the poems that I read from that small library at that time. Then while in secondary school, I introduced myself to the works of David Rubaidiri, the Ugandan poet among several others. I say "I introduced myself" because no one was there to hold my hands and lead me through that path, no one was there. The fascination with books came as a hunger not for knowledge but as for " lonely impulse of delight" the words of Yeats. Yeats' quote here, one I was not aware of, is the only explanation to that feeling I had towards books. In time, I started reading more of poetry books, perhaps for the brevity and in part, for the words, how poets, concisely, used language as a tool of not just expressions but as a weapon wielded in no way ordinary.

Many poets have  described the process of composing a  poem or poems as a way of releasing tension? Does this resonate with you? What is poetry to you?

Sometimes I sit down for days reading poetry, with the intention of writing my own. Meditating through poems became for me a way of unspooling the wonder, or better still the mystery contained in the verses, and it gives me the balance between this world and the other, though subjectively, more inclined to the later because the inevitability of it, I think, calls up questions that needed answers. I turn to poetry, not as a form of art to release tensions but to interpret what needs to be interpreted. It's a conscious call to partake in that divinity that avails us the myths which, as interesting as they are, open up a well of knowledge hitherto unknown. By release of tension, you can only find it within the context of grief, or menace. And this doesn't represent what poetry means. Poetry is broad and should be practiced in that vein.

Most often, when emerging poets start writing poems, we call it 'doggerel'. At what stage can you say your poems matured?

Progress is a natural phenomenon. It's an evolutionary statement on humanity, epochal. It pervades us. If at some point, it's named, I wouldn't disagree. Just as it's normal, it's also objective. Same can be said of  the mental course of man as much as the physical. In most cases, such progress can be measured. In writing, as much as I believe in the differentiation of period, I can't tell at what stage I matured as a poet because even now the process is not complete yet. If I say my poems are mature, what if I find what I write now as fledgeling in years to come?

Interesting!

Now, let's get to winning the Sillerman poetry prize for 2023. Were you expecting it when it came?

Over and over again, I have been asked this question, and my response has never changed. Expectations bore me. During a heated argument against the balance of the relationship between one individual and the other, I was fortunate to have heard from a friend that most of our external crisis comes from expectations. We expect too much from people, from events, from life, and because life is not a tool in our hands, we tend toward gloom. Moreso, it's good to be hopeful for things but hope itself is dynamic, incredibly obverse. So to hope is to live within the ambits of what we cannot control and what we cannot control defines our very essence, so my question is; why expect, why hope. As a student of philosophy, one of those ideas that gives the impression I needed to live differently, is the idea of the stoic. Winning a prize wasn't something I needed to balance my career as a writer. It wasn't a fixation. It was not a means to an end, or an end to a means. After  I submitted that book, I became conscious of what prizes were and spent my energy. So what I did was to forge a kind of forgetfulness that enabled a kind of peace. In all the phases I went through as a writer, this was the hardest, winning the Sillerman prize and the attendant leanings and it was the very thing I fought hard not to gain control over me. I am a hardcover addict. All I ever wanted was to publish a book by all means and  have my hands hold and my eyes pored over; it is what I believed to be the ultimate goal.

How did you feel when you were named the winner?

I felt very happy. A kind of out of the world peace that came with the winning.

I read on your timeline the fact that some folks couldn't believe you won the prize. What can you guess could be their thinking?

Last year's Sillerman prize was a little bit disturbing. Though I read the winning email Nebraska University sent me, I too was thrown into a confusion as the folks that believed it was a mistake; my winning. The email read 2021, but that my name and details were engraved on it, I was caught between elation and skepticism. The former took a more sturdy hold of me than the latter. A very close friend took it upon himself to post that chaotic number " 2021" with arguments that I didn't win it. I was told. I never got to read it before it was pulled down. What informed his later decision was lost on me. But it wasn't healthy. It was after Nebraska University corrected the error that I was home to my winning, finally, in a week.

What themes do you find comfortable exploring in your poems?

I find neo-colonialism disturbing. The best of us becoming residents and citizens in places far away from home, is not working phenomenon, looking at the place of globalization and the transatlantic slave trade that disemboweled our common or shared mentality as a people. I have every reason to believe in emigration as a new trend rocking us, and every reason to leave the continent. It would be beautiful to do so. And more beautiful to see that friends and fellows in the literary world are doing that most beautifully.  The part I am not comfortable with is the part that says you must leave by crook. Most African societies, villages included are faced with quite disheartening choices. These choices are triggered by war, hunger, and lack. When you look at migration from that small lens placed on the pride of your people as industrious, deserving of everything good, you can't help but to lament. And I find this lamentation quite disturbing too. In my works, I bring neo-colonialism and migration together on paper with the intention of defining my origin through these things.

Some poets are natural when it comes to love poems and those laced with themes that depict sorrow. What kind of poet are you?

I like to see myself as a non-conformist, not only in poetry but in my whole being. Being unapologetically unconventional is my forte.

You mentioned that you started writing stories but you find poetry very comfortable. What is the reason for this?

Exposure. Love. Brevity. I was exposed to poetry more than I was to prose or play writing. With time, my love for it took precedence over all. Its brevity accounts for it.

Tell us about frameshift.

Frameshifts: the frame there stands for the human body. The shifts represents the forms it takes. This includes the spirit, which is seen as the immaterial force that gives life a meaning. I do not think so. I see the human as a biological being without a spirit. Frameshifts is my humble exposition on the body/spirit argument.Between the arguments, I also related it to migration; the spirit leaving the body as Africans leave in droves to embrace the west.

I see.

What advice do you have for emerging poets?

Write. Read. Write. Read. Do more of reading. Dreams come true. Believe in yourself even if the world doesn't.

Thank you so much for your time.

You can follow my guest on the following social media handles:

Facebook: tares Oburumu Twitter: @oburumu tares

So, beautiful people, we will draw the curtains here. Let's meet again for another exciting time together. I remain Yours Truly,

Julius Topohozin.