Besides the constant, unquantifiable encouragement and support from my family, when I was in primary school in Enugu I was very fortunate to have a teacher who was very interested in writing and in literature and culture in general. She was or is a British-Guyanese-Nigerian woman called Rosa Chukwu, Aunty Rosa. She also taught music and geography. She's a dear friend of mine now, if I can say that, and one of the best people I've ever known. She ran a writing workshop at school on, I think, Friday mornings. So, we had a task every week to write a poem or very short story. Sometimes a limerick or a haiku or couplet or acrostic. Rather fundamental poetic forms which were good practice for the ear and eye. I was always reading as a child, but this was the first time anyone ever asked me to actually write something with form and intention, and to write out of my experience and reading. I think that rather unassuming training really was the foundation for my writing poetry. There was a sort of frisson or thrill that came with writing a couplet, for example, and getting the rhymes right or getting the line to scan. It's the same kind of thrill I would get from listening to some music or a nursery rhyme and being fascinated by the images or the interaction of the sounds. I think every child has some experience of this. Children are always making up some kind of chant or jingle, always some silly story or joke. It's quite natural, but I guess a sense of form helps in bringing particular aptitudes into relief. And from a young age we all respond in some way to the language around us. I was raised in a rather religious environment, as most Nigerians are, and I found hymns and the poetry of the Bible affected me a lot. Poetry is democratic in that you can find it everywhere--not just in poetry books. Nursery rhymes, films, songs. There was, for example, this Igbo folk song called "Nwanyiga" that we had to learn. Now, having practised so long to learn to read, in Whitman's phrase, I can analyse the poetic structure, the recurrences and whatnot, but for a child it just stuck. And those little songs never escape one's memory. It's the same with Christmas carols, or with Mother Goose or the songs you sing when you play jump rope, or Who is in the Garden, or when you're taunting your siblings, just as much as for a more intentionally poetic effort like Longfellow's 'Hiawatha's Song'. That last one was a personal favourite, and the lines never seem to fade: By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water… At the end of the school year Aunty Rosa would type up our poems and compile them into a little house magazine, so to speak. So that's where those posts you refer to come from. So that was all pretty useful foundational stuff, as far as form or vocation. As for whether there were 'specific moments or experiences that sparked my passion'. Yes, certainly. I remember Christopher Okigbo had this autobiographical manuscript that was lost or destroyed, where he was going to set out certain experiences or revelations that engendered his poetic impulse. I think these revelations, or epiphanies if you like, exist for every poet, but I think it would be saying too much to say anything more about that just now.

The first response I'd give to this is that there are way too many to mention. Every poet I read has a bit of influence on me. It could be positive or negative, in terms of "this is what I want to do" or "this is really what I don't want to do." And I'm thinking about poetry or poets in some form or the other most of the day on most days, so you see the difficulty. But maybe I can offer this up as an example: a very fundamental awakening into poetry in a mature sense for me was discovering T.S Eliot. I was attending this seminar on Modern European Culture during my foundation year at University College London. I think I was about 16, so I was just about old enough to grasp the poetry. I don't think I'd heard of Eliot before that time; there was a definite before and after Eliot. We had to read 'The Waste Land' for that seminar. I went to Waterstones on Gower Street, one of the most important bookshops in my life. I remember I sat right there on the floor, it was a dark winter afternoon, my first winter, and I kind of blazed through 'The Waste Land'. I was kind of left quivering, it was so different from the work I was used to reading in the way it blew up poetic structure. Remember I had had this early training in rather traditional English rhythms. I had never quite seen someone use language in that kind of way, or I felt like I had been waiting all my life to see someone use language in that way. It was like the difference between a hymn and prayer. That was my awakening to modernist poetry. Of course I don't think I understood much at first reading. But then my tutor, Luke Seaber, rather dramatically read through the poem in our next class and did this extraordinary line by line exegesis, and it was extremely rewarding to find that I could track some of the allusions and references (to think of it, I should also mention my secondary school literature teacher, Mrs Airat Adekunle, whose close reading was also a joy to witness). I'd loved history as a child, and Arthuriana and Greek mythology, as we all do, and I'd always had taken a kind of agnostic thrill in sombre, existential ritual…I was a rather morbid, melodramatic, apocalyptic child, always thinking about The Book of Revelation, and I had a real fear of thunder and lightning and strong wind, I liked to watch processions… so seeing it all come together was… I don't know how to explain it. A comparable experience to Dr. Seaber's performance was watching Ralph Fiennes perform the 'Four Quartets' a few years later, at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London, and also, of course, hearing the Jeremy Irons and Eileen Atkins rendition for the BBC. It's Eliot's lines that have accompanied me more than most during my years wandering around London. I can't tell you how many times I've been on the Metropolitan Line and thought, "My feet are at Moorgate and my heart under my feet"...

In Teju Cole I admire a certain humanist, cosmopolitan aesthetic, or perhaps the interdisciplinary or pluriversal approach. I'll say he strikes me as a descendant of several writers that I admire. And I appreciate what I feel is his openness to the world. I have met him in person, very awkwardly, very tongue-tied-ly, a couple of times, the last time a couple of months ago. I wonder if I made any sort of impression, I'd hope so. I do hate to meet people I admire, it's always an enervating experience, which is a bit unbecoming. He was giving the Clarendon Lectures at Oxford, and he spoke about Emily Dickinson and W.S Merwin and Kay Ryan and Layli Long Soldier. That's when he talked about the pleasures of reading; poetry will be the last thing they take away from me, he said. I overheard members of the English Faculty talk about how kind he was, I think they were all a bit charmed by him. His approach to reading poems and responding to them in a personal way, especially, if it doesn't sound too precious, as a black man doing that in Oxford was really quite encouraging. And without any pretension, with good humour and a lot of ethical weight. His readings actually inspired me, and I think a few of my friends who also attended the lectures, to write a few poems. I think that's because it's easier to write poems when you know you have the chance of having a sensitive reader. So I guess I admire Teju Cole especially as a reader, but also because his photographs are great, and his engagement with art, and his ethical concerns are important to me. In terms of direct influence, I should say there's almost none at all, but I think he's the most interesting and most innovative Nigerian writer today, if it's not limiting to call him that.

What I want readers to take away… I don't want to impose my view of the world on anybody. Maybe I can put it like this. I'm not that tortured an artist but I have managed to get around my little doses of tragedy and pain and discomfort through poetry. During the first real crisis I had as an adult, my first instinct was to sort of understand it through poetry. And then it was 'Oh, I guess it's not lies, there is some power in this thing'. A little ritual I do sometimes is to go into the library and pick up a random book, maybe by an obscure Spanish or Scottish poet in the 16th century and read a poem out of it. I do that so that the narrative arc, the communion is complete, if you see what I mean. The writer composed that poem at a certain time, in a certain place, inspired by something around them and probably did not imagine someone like me reading their work maybe five hundred years later. But there was the hope that at least one person would read the poem, and get at least something out of it. The idea that someone in the future might read my work and maybe feel something, even if it's totally removed from my own life or experience, even if the poem is by then anonymous, is enough for me. I am a very politically-minded person, a kind of anarchist. I believe in the dignity of humanity. I believe in freedom, and in radical empathy, and if my poems can help increase sensitivity to other people's pain, and maybe encourage us to help each other a bit, then I think it's worth doing. Maybe that's what I want people to take away from my work, if that's possible. I try to embrace the full spectrum of human experience, so I don't really run away from any emotion. But I'm not effusive. Somewhere T.S Eliot has this homily about poetry not being the turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion, or something to that effect. So I try to reify my emotions in the poem so that I can externalize them and understand them, and understand my reactions to life, and death, better. Recently, I've mostly been writing about death and grief, maybe a little bit about love. But I'd rather write than talk about the themes I'm writing about. In a way I'm not writing 'about' anything, I'm just writing.

I haven't figured it out. I'm not sure I should even call myself a visual artist; I struggle enough with calling myself a poet. Or maybe I should just get over myself already. Sometimes, I develop a sort of creative block because I don't know how to use an idea that comes and I don't want to waste it by using it in the wrong medium. It just comes down to trusting your instincts and realizing that not everything must be perfect. It is possible to put it through a process, though. For example, it is possible to make collages out of photographs or take images out of photographs to interrogate the image by drawing before painting. I use drawing as a means of discovery and I've used photography as a way of getting used to my surroundings. I'll say that I'm fortunate or misfortunate to have a pretty strong memory, and my visual memory is especially faithful if I'm paying attention, maybe even more so than my memory for words. I don't seem to forget or be unable to reconstruct much. As for how this relates to art, here's an example: sometimes I'll take a photograph of something and put the photograph aside and try to draw and then compare the drawing with the photograph. In the drawing, and I'm not exactly a naturalistic draughtsman, there always tends to be a sort of distortion, no matter how many elements of reality are retained. But, you see, isn't this instructive? Isn't art a kind of distortion, a kind of forgetting, a kind of blurring? Painting is less of an instinctive thing for me. Sculpting comes more naturally to me. Sculpting was the first thing I ever did creatively, actually. I used to make paper sculptures as a child before I even got into poetry, and kneading clay is the closest I get to silence, to a blank mind that's not full of anxious buzzing, even now. But I respond very strongly to paintings. My favourite painter is Van Gogh. He loved the world, the worldliness of the world, and loved people, their humanity, and the thingness of things. I feel like I don't really understand colours, although I feel them. They derange my senses. Colours, paintings are full of shifting, deferred meanings. Are these non-sequiturs? When I do paint, I suppose, despite some art historical academic knowledge, I'm being very naive. I just let it take whatever form. It just comes as it does. Maybe I can say that my Chi guides me. I should say that I'm very interested in music as well. Music gives me a sense of movement. My grandfather, apparently, was an adept drummer, the Yoruba talking drum. I wonder if this all makes sense.

I was born in Benin City, actually. Most of my world was Benin until I was 8. We travelled to Lagos often; my mother grew up there and my Igbo grandparents lived there for about half a century. We traveled to Kaduna a lot. Ibadan as well. So I have strong memories of all of these places. And then we lived in Enugu and Lagos, and travelled to other parts of Nigeria for various reasons. And then I spent most of my late teens and early twenties in London, and there was the year in Rome. I think it's natural that all these places impress somewhat on what comes out.

Yes, thank you for reading it, and for your kind adjective. I'll say that poem is kind of inspired by certain aspects of maybe Derek Walcott and Walt Whitman. I was going for a pastoral, landscape, memory, history, psychogeography vibe, with some commentary on religion or superstition, and mortality. Irregular rhyming, the long line, mixing the high-falutin, self-serious voice with the demotic… There's something in there, self-mocking, about alienation too, spiritual, cultural, aesthetic, zoological. But I think I shouldn't say too much about my own poem, or what I was trying to do. It leaves one a bit vulnerable, and I think I run the risk of sounding too self-assured or self-involved, which I hope I'm not. But yes, it had to do with certain personal attachments to the Enugu landscape.

It's something I feel a responsibility to do and it's also something that comes naturally. I think I have a responsibility to be honest, though I don't hold anyone else to that, and in that honesty, my Nigerian and African perspectives come out. Although, I have to say I don't believe in Nigeria, as such... I really, rather vehemently, don't believe in nations or states. I think they're grand, corrosive lies that we just have to stomach, at least for now. I don't feel any allegiance to the Nigerian state; I do feel allegiance to Nigerian people. But also as an artist, I feel--if this does not sound grandiose--I feel responsible for the whole human race. I am not just concerned about Nigerians or Africans because I am an African. There is this natural sentimentality towards one's origins, but it doesn't stop me from being concerned, for example, about Palestine or the Uyghurs, or about the person that lives next door to me here in Oxford or anywhere else. And not just about the victims of violence or oppression, but I am only concerned about those who oppress. What so twists and malforms a human being to this degree, or what gives us the incentive to succumb to our baser instincts, is there a way to reduce the chances of this, is reconciliation ever, ever possible? Can poetry exist in such a dark world? Could we do without poetry in such a dark world? I also think a lot about nature and animals. I think love is universal and inexhaustible.

I suppose I shouldn't give away the secrets. But, going outside, touching grass, reading, of course, watching films, going to galleries, just daily experiences of life, which one can't avoid anyway, until we die. I am kind of particular about my stationery but I think I can write anywhere or anyhow. It just comes out when it will. I'm not so concerned about keeping things flowing. It happens when it happens, and it's actually mostly not that good. I also try to organize my life in such a way that I am not writing for my livelihood. I don't really get my stuff published all that much, and I think I'm a long way off from having my pictures exhibited in a gallery or whatever. All that doesn't mean so much to me. Garcia Lorca mostly gave his drawings out as gifts. Sometimes, I'll write a poem and send it to my sisters or my friends. I've written poems for random strangers. Once, one evening, at a bar in Magodo, some forty-something year old, rather heady guy came up to me and was a bit obnoxious, asking what I was doing. I said I'm a poet, and he asked me to write him a poem on the spot, like a kind of circus trick. I wrote him a quick poem about death and how the prime of one's life fades quickly like the day and becoming evening, and our days being emptied out like so many bottles of beer. And I think he was a bit taken aback. Anyways I circulate my poems to readers in sometimes indirect, unorthodox ways. Getting published is nice, and getting some recognition and sometimes money, but that's not really why I do any of it.

I don't have a bucket list as such. I will do what I'm able to do before I die. But there are a couple of projects I have had in mind for some time. Maybe if I tell you about some of them, you'll hold me accountable. I want to do something in film. Maybe this year, maybe never. There's also stuff I want to do in translation. But I'd really rather not count my eggs.

Yes, that is one thing I want to write about. I was in Rome during the first major COVID crisis, around late 2019 to late 2020. There was a lot of existential dread stuff going on. That was also when I experienced my first real shock of racism. I had known Italy had some, I think ignominious, racist tendencies, but actually experiencing it first hand was shocking. My first week in Rome, I was stopped by the police, that kind of thing. Followed round shops. The first time I was called nigger to my face, or 'Africano' as people would shout sometimes. Someone threw an egg at me once. A lot of unfriendly stares, and sometimes a real sense of physical danger. Other things. Because of certain privileges and certain safety blankets in life, I hadn't had to experience that kind of prejudice before. But it was less about what was happening to me and more a concern for what I saw happening to African and Asian immigrants. Police harassment, the general scorn. Once, I was at a gelateria with friends and a Pakistani man, a hawker, who sold these cheap touristy trinkets came in with a plastic bag of coins. He was trying to count out the coins to pay for his gelato and the white Italian guy serving behind the counter just waved him off, a very impatient and annoyed gesture. The ease of the dismissal and the way the doleful man accepted it, without protestation was harrowing. He just put his coins back in his plastic bag and moved on. There is a lack of dignity that racism breeds, it erodes you into submission, makes you accept this degradation. I saw a lot of homelessness, starvation, poverty, segregation. All these were going around the Colosseum and the Pantheon and the Basilica and the Fontana di Trevi. All these beautiful monuments are supposed to be evidence of civilization. But are we really, or are they really, all that civilized, and what does that say about me that was so taken and enchanted by this idea of civilization in the first instance?

I'm not sure what the difference between poetry and good prose is, really. Or between poetry and fiction or fiction and non-fiction or whatever. I know there are differences, but any attempt to articulate these differences seems insincere to me. In all good writing there is a certain care afforded to putting the little engine together either on a word-to-word basis or a phrase-to-phrase basis. I don't know. Maybe poetry has more recurrence; it turns on itself more. But some fiction also has some element of recurrence. I write narrative poems sometimes, and sometimes, I write stories that kind of turn certain notes or themes over and over. When I write what I call prose, I try not to be too poetic; but I also try not to be too poetic when I write what I call poetry. I guess I'm not so sure that fiction is a 'medium'. For pleasure, I mostly read poetry now, and philosophy, history, biographical stuff, but maybe there's a little irony in that in my academic life, I have mostly been concerned about the theory of the novel, so I'm also always reading novels, but in a more dispassionate way, perhaps, than poetry. Studying poetry academically, and not in the haphazard, obsessive way I do as a poet, would kill it for me, I am not the first to say this. This is a big part of the reason that I am presently studying anthropology. There is this book by Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending, which suggests that we write because we know we are going to die. So, narrative is a way of making sense of our lives, of the knowledge of our mortality; so is poetry. And, Kermode says criticism is making sense of the way in which we make sense of our lives; so is anthropology.

If you mean the spin-off from the remake, Mufasa, it's alright, but I think it was a classic Hollywood money grab. I first watched Lion King when I was 3 or 4 and I still remember it vividly. The dialogue, the music, the colours. The characters had more character. The plot was not so predictable. There was a sort of Shakespearean tragedy vibe to that first Lion King film, it just felt like it meant more. This felt contrived, and so did the remake, though that was slightly better. I don't know what's wrong with good old animation, which is a dying art. Why does it have to be live-action? Maybe it's just my nostalgia. But I fear that children will watch the remake now and think that's alright. They're being cheated. We are being force-fed rubbish. I do take The Lion King very seriously, being a Leo, of course.

I won't use the phrase 'check out'. I think it's important to share stuff with people but everyone will get to things in their own time. Or not, that's also fine. But if you do, I'll say don't check it out, actually pay attention. To begin with, be intentional about telling people stories and also be intentional about paying attention to stories people tell you, and what they don't tell you-- that's all the art you need. But anyway, I recently finished James Baldwin's Go Tell It On The Mountain. I read that over Christmas. It's very useful for understanding something about family and trauma and religious ambiguity. Keziah Jones is releasing a new album later this month and I think he is a one out of a million talent. I bought this Igbo Mmanwu-Adanma mask recently and although I am not superstitious, I found myself, for some reason, terrified at the prospect of having this representation of a spirit being in the room where I sleep. Thinking through this instinctual reaction, deconstructing it, has been as transformative as any kind of transgression can be. Films: Love Jones, which is a silly, artsy, slightly pseudo-intellectual Black American rom-com about situationships, and The Hours, which is about Virginia Woolf, poetry, mortality, love and friendship. A poem: "Requiem" by Anna Akhmatova, which is about suffering, and maybe hope.