Born on the 19th day of November 1990, Emmanuel Ehi’zogie Iyeomoan is a graduate of Economics and Statistics at the University of Benin, Nigeria. He is lover of nature which, he believes, is the totality of Art. His writings have been published in anthologies and magazines and other platforms, both home and abroad. In this interview with IBRAHIM RAMALAN, Ehi’zogie pours out his minds about his life, poetry and trends of books marketing on social media
Who is Ehi’zogie Iyeomoan?
Ehi’zogie Iyeomoan is sometimes the poetic personae in my scribbles, other times a [real] human trying to grasp the poetries of living like not living, especially that aspect of death and its probable continuity afterlife.
He participated in the 2015 Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) poets’ residency on the Goree Island, Dakar, Senegal. Ehi’zogie is most renowned for his Fulani boy poem which won the 5th edition of the Korea-Nigeria Poetry Feast competition, and later received honorary mention in the 2015 Castello Di Duino International Poetry Competition and has since been translated into French and Italian.
In 2016, his political poem: A dead poet’s table of content won the UNESCO-sponsored Castello Di Duino poetry prize. And most recently his poem,Maritime Hallucinations won the 2nd prize in the maiden edition of the IsiakaAliaganLiterary Competition, poetry category. Two of his poems: In your eyes [published by Expound journal of Arts and Aesthetics] and The globe in my pocket [published by Gnarled Oak] has been nominated for a 2017 Pushcart Prize for Poetry.
You read Economics in the University, what inspired you into poetry?
While I was in NEPA Staff Primary school, Sapele in Delta State, my Literature-in-English teacher, MrsNomu would make us recite aloud the nursery rhymes (poems) in the school’s syllabus till it stuck to our hearts like a nice song. I think I recited nursery rhymes from Primary 2 to 5, because Literature-in-English was merged with English Language while I was in Primary 6. I fell in love with the Old Roger poem and My Mother and The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe and Humpty Dumpty and Solomon Grundy and many others. I still can recite most of them, missing out a few lines and words to time and memory.
Also personal experiences spurred me into writing what I would later call infant feeble pieces—pieces bordered around many sour experiences while I was growing up as a child in an unsecured country as Sapele made me feel Nigeria was as at then.I
n 1994, a year after the Babangida regime had annulled what was seen as the most credible general election Nigeria has ever had, things went bad for many families whose breadwinners [majorly civil servants] had protested against the Military government’s highhandedness. Many lost their jobs; my family was trapped in this web and many things went wrong for us and growing up became a nightmare I wish I never had.
To this day I am yet to forgive the Nigerian government, who’s yet to pay my ageing father and many others in the defunct National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) their accumulated retirement benefits. To remain sane I have had no better choice than write about these things to become what people say is poetry.
Studying Economics in the University of Benin, Nigeria is what I would call ‘the Nigerian Reconfiguration of Ambition’. I initially wanted and still want to study Fine and Applied Arts. But family and society and its accompanying unfavourable probabilities…
So while I was in the University studying Economics, I spent spare time drawing and writing essays and scribbling on the insides of covers of my books rushed-over-stories that my poems are.
Over the years, your poetry has been raving reviews across national and international journals and last year you published your debut, ‘Flames of the Forest’, a poetry collection. How come it has not yet hit the world on the nose?
Truly Flames of the Forest—my debut— published by Pedagogues Publishing Ltd., Benin City is yet to hit the literary world ‘on the nose’ [like you and others have noticed] because it was printed in the United States of America by Createspace, which makes orders via Amazon and other e-bookstores for single copies relatively expensive.
My publisher had promised to print a Nigerian edition [which would have been more affordable] but up to this day, he has failed to do so. If you ask me, I’d say I fell into the hands of a ‘one chance’ publisher [*laughs] who wanted to bring his publishing house to limelight with my name. And he succeeded in confusing me with fat-paper-terms I didn’t know he would not be able to keep. At the moment I am looking for another Nigerian publisher willing to republish the book. I prefer traditional publishing.
These days, the bulk of marketing and promotion is now shifting from the publishers alone, that writers themselves, especially the self-published ones need to promote themselves by themselves. How do you see social media becoming germane for that purpose?
That’s true, Ibrahim. And I say: it is a blessing in disguise, for books published traditionally though. For self-published books, the Authors promote themselves by first building an appreciable readers’ hub via Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and through blogs and Forums. But this sometimes is a terrible way to market oneself.
I noticed that only a few readers on social media are willing to buy these books when they are published, such that authors now release free digital chapbooks. I think it has to do with the state of the Economy. No be everybody wey put toothpick for mouth eat meat. But that being that, social media has made it possible to build a network of loyal readers who would pay or not pay to read a brilliant work of art.
Now that you are done with your NYSC what is next?
My NYSC experience saw me pioneering a Free Food for Almajiri Boys project in Mallam-Madori, Jigawa State. It wouldn’t have been possible without financial and moral support from friends on social media. Halima Ayuba [Laura M Kaminski] and Adebola Fashanu and others who wouldn’t want their names mentioned made sure Thinking Tomorrow, as I christened the initiative became a success.
One of my plans after completing the NYSC in April 2015 was to register Thinking Tomorrow as an NGO to provide education and food to out of school underprivileged children. I am yet to do that for some reasons, but I WILL. At the moment I am seeking intern opportunities in National/International NGOs so as to broaden my knowledge on the operations of such organizations, while I render my services as a volunteer.
Though you have other various masterpieces like Colourless Things, Tonics of a Madman, Wet Dreams and many others, your poems: Fulani Boy and We are Africans rang a loud bell in the country and even abroad and I believe the power of imagery did that magic for you. What other things do you put in mind, aside imagery, while writing your poetry?
I beg to not call some of my pieces ‘poems’, but rushed over stories. I believe time is too short for long stories. When I write, I do not think about figures of speech or sound or whatever. I just write. And when I am done with the first draft of a piece, I type it into my mobile device.
This may take hours, even days that may stretch into weeks if not months. It is this process of rereading and rewriting the piece that adds polished flesh to its skeleton. I critique my works a lot and allow others do that as well. It refines them, critiquing. Sometimes I bundle unworthy pieces, slice them to unreadable bits or burn them to ashes. And this too is poetry.
In your opinion, why is it that many Nigerian writers needed to leave the country before they could find their voices?
Maybe home is anywhere new and unfamiliar voices are valued. And maybe Nigeria is too noisy and too busy with archaic forms to appreciate creative and innovative genius. The school’s syllabus is too rigid to allow the mint of new voices.
It is good to value pioneers, very good, but by doing so weshould not close our eyes and shut our brains to new and refined voices. Poetry is a global language anyway. So if it would take a kite to reach to the top of a mountain or fly overland and overseas before it is called a bird, why not?
Across the world, there has been a thematic stereotyping of African writers as writers majorly about colonial experiences, feminism, poverty, injustice, etc. Do you see that changing in not so a distant time to come?
Yes I see that changing to an extent. The world is at the moment converging at some thematic fronts, such that you see an African writer on such themes as gay rights, Sexuality and Gender equality and moreso—they write particular experiences rather than general—which used to beethnocentric/Pan-Africanist. Things are changing and changing fast. But at the same time that blurry side of history would in a longtime, say decades, remain as patches in writings by Africans.
What other things do you have interest in?
I am interested in children and the positive spillovers and multiplying effect of their potentials in the near future if well-managed, or otherwise.I also am interested in NGOs that nurse and protect children rights. I also have interest in studying Fine and Applied Arts whenever the fund is available. And setting up a purely poetry publishing outfit.
What do you do when you are not writing?
When I am not writing, I am either following global and national trends on TV or on Twitter or Nairaland and elsewhere, or reading a prose fiction, my favorite genre as a reader. I may as well be reading any of my contemporaries [poets] or teaching my students at Campus Lectures [Benin] Economics and/or Mathematics.
You could also find me playing a recorder or listening to old school musicals (highlife, juju, afro pop, or country] in the quiet of my room especially when I’m in a bad mood. It is therapeutic and heals the broken mind faster than any pill. Or I may just be playing football or scrabble or chess with my mobile phone, or swimming in a pool of water. And oh I forgot to add that operas are my lullabies for most sleepless nights.
Who do you look up to as your mentors?
Difficult question. There’s a very long list of writers and humanists in my head. But Uzoigwe Daniel, Victor Ofeimun, Laura M Kaminski and Adebola Fashanu, Funmi Aluko andothers are dragging for top spot on that list.
