Chit-Chat, Poetics & Ethos

JOEL: Let me start by asking – who you are.

ADESIYAN: I am a student of Medicine and Surgery, a literary enthusiast, a creative writer, a
poetry editor & a Christian. I currently reside in Oyo state with my family. I hail from Osun State,
Nigeria. Lastly, I am a member of The Poetic Collective.

JOEL: What else is not on your bio – something very unique about you?

ADESIYAN: I enjoy listening to Nigerian music a lot, & bingeing on movies. My favourite Nigerian musicians are Johnny Drille & Brymo because of their soulful & poetic style of music. Another fun fact about me is that I am addicted to fresh tomatoes (laughs). Also, when I am not writing poems or studying science textbooks, I enjoy playing chess, & reading romance novels, so you could say I am a romantic.

JOEL: Romantic? Well, your wife would know the truth (laughs). When did you start writing and why poetry?

ADESIYAN: I could say I have been writing since I was seven years old but I think I became intentional in the year 2021. Before this, I was vested in writing short stories, & multiple novels (which I never really finished anyway). I remember I was in Junior Secondary Class Two when we were given an assignment in English class to write a poem on any subject matter of our choice. Before that, I had never written a poem. Never! But amazingly, when I submitted my assignment, my teacher was so impressed that he praised me a lot. To my surprise, he also showed the poem to several of his colleagues. This catalyzed my interest in poetry. Consequently, I began writing poems. I wrote and learned from some of the poets I could find in our recommended literature texts then, the likes of Williams Shakespeare (I can still remember so vividly how often I wrote sonnets during recess), Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo, Kofi Awonoor, Ama At Aidoo, Niyi Osundare and several others.

As I grew up, I suffered an identity crisis in school resulting in me isolating myself from everyone, & having low self-esteem as a  kid. I fought hard through depression & suicidal tendencies, & hardly even had any friends by the time I was in my senior classes.  Thus, poetry became an ally, & consequently, a medium of therapy. Now, I write because it is my buckler against the onslaught of these internal conflicts of self-love, & self-discovery. I write to tell my story in ways that defy fear or societal constraint that terms introversion a social dysfunction. I write to heal, to mend, & to conquer.

JOEL: Who is your favourite poet?

ADESIYAN: To be truthful, it is pretty hard to pick a favourite poet because there are always several poets I admire for different reasons, & uniqueness in style. Internationally, my favourite poets are Ocean Vuong, Danusha Laméris, Kaveh Akbar, Louise Glück, Sylvia Plath, Hanif Abdurraqib and many others. My favorite Nigerian poet however will be Samuel Adeyemi because his book “Heaven is a Metaphor” was the first poetry collection that fascinated and revealed to me how much could be achieved with language. Sometimes, my reverence for his work influences mine, unconsciously. Some other Nigerian poets I admire are Adedayo Agarau, Gbenga Adesina, Gbenga Adeoba, Romeo Oriogun, Pamilerin Jacobs, Itiola Jones and a bevvy of others.

Joel: Samuel Adeyemi is one of those I also admire. Your taste is wonderful. You recently announced that your chapbook ETHOS has been scheduled for publication by Ukiyoto, UK. How did the idea begin?

ADESIYAN: I have always been an inquisitive & argumentative individual, especially when it comes to the subject of religion, & unbelief — something we perceive as a social dysfunction, & how societal principles and ideologies sometimes compromise our loyalty to aristocratic manipulation. Writing about such a topic thus demanded a great measure of self-control, distancing myself from what the society forces me to think, & painting an almost mirror-image of what is,  without blemishing the truth. Oftentimes, my poetry is praised for its intimacy & honesty, but most of all, what I aim to achieve most is poetry that dares to exist even when it is about issues that the society has shrouded us from talking about / investigating the truth behind them. Say injustice. Say mental health. Say men sieged of atheism.

Constructing Ethos was hectic, & at a point, I wanted to give up on the collection. The idea for the collection came a year ago (without the title though). I dumped it afterwards because I was not in the right state of mind or skill set to write such demanding work. Ethos demanded a lot from me, particularly mentally. I remember the first poem “Miracles” came about five months after the conception idea, & days, weeks, & months later I played around with lines (jotting down words, lines and complete stanzas for a poem jumping into my head), I read several essays on theology, arguments, in fact at some point I began to read Greek mythology which was the genesis of some poems: “Lucent Dreaming” & “Sappho” in the forthcoming book. I investigated existential nihilism, & it wasn’t until I had written the last poem in the collection forthcoming from Ninshar Arts “A Life by Death” that I knew for sure the book had ended. Perhaps, not decisively ended because even after I sent the book out for publication, I still felt a considerable amount of incompleteness. During the editing stage, I had to let go of some poems because of thematic correlation. It took eight months to complete “Ethos”.

Joel: Wow. That seems like a long ride. Did you read any work to help with inspiration?

ADESIYAN: Yes, I did. A lot. One book I held closely to me during this process was Kaveh Akbar’s Pilgrim Bells because of its eclectic ideology on religion, & human conduct. Romeo Oriogun’s Sacraments of Bodies also complemented in shaping the voice of poems in this collection.

Joel: What do you intend to achieve with Ethos?

ADESIYAN: Hopefully, continue to tell my undiluted stories, our untold stories through the vehicle of language & make poetry largely accessible to everyone. I am aware of the notion most people have that poetry is a tedious genre of literature to read & comprehend. However, I believe this to be false. It just means the reader hasn’t dived into the poem enough to the point where the poet wants him or her to crack the meaning/subject of the poem, something I tweeted about some weeks ago on Twitter. Poetry should be a medium of transmission of cultures, values, knowledge & memories, a necessary mechanism in journeying the message of a poem to a reader’s mind. As T.S Eliot once said, “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood”, Poetry, I believe is a magnification of the deep, abstract feelings which make up the substratum of our being, for without which our lives will be an artless existence, the undiluted expression of man’s freedom from constraining emotion itself, our elastic imagination as said by the prestigious Vietnamese poet, Ocean Vuong is “the oldest form of technology.” Poetry is man’s he(art).

Joel: I love the paronomasia at the end (laughs). Where do you see Nigerian poetry ten years from now?

ADESIYAN: I see Nigerian poetry flourishing to bigger stages, making waves, more poetry books, a larger poetry readership base, & most of all, more governmental investments / NGOs involvement in raising young and talented creatives. I see budding poets taking the mantle of old masters and treading the path for a new legacy. I see Nigerian poetry making unthinkable accomplishments. I see Nigerian poetry making its hallmark on the world’s map.

Joel: Amen. What is your advice for younger poets?

ADESIYAN: Read. Read. Read. Write. Read. Read. Read. Write. Also, always aim to improve as a creative, & take active participation in the accommodating literary community. And don’t forget that the output of your craft is how much work and dedication you put into it.

Joel: Lastly, do you have any other forthcoming projects?

ADESIYAN: Currently, I have another poetry chapbook in the oven. It is a documentation of the human experience from the universal pronoun “we” – navigating through contrasting elements of joy & despair, vulnerability & resilience in creating a multi-layered exploration of human travails. A clustered work on displacement from the self to the general, it seems. So far the collection is coming together, chaotically, & hopefully, it will make its way to the outside world sCopy