Poets Talk: 5 Questions with Daisy Odey

What is the process of writing a poem like for you? Is it a lot of hard work or easy?

Daisy Odey: Writing a poem for me is neither easy nor hard, it just is… To say it is easy will be claiming it can be done by anyone with no effort and to say it is hard is to promote the false hope that it gets easier. It is a journey you start knowing you don’t know the destination, but you will know when you get there.

Writing a poem for me takes a lot of patience, and open mindedness. Sometimes I make one poem from three old drafts or build it from a collection of random lines scribbled over time.

The true writing is in rewriting. Here I begin to make deliberate decisions to make every line work, decisions on structure. I have each word justify its place because I favor brevity. In the end I also must know when to let well alone. I know when doing anymore will only hurt the work.

I then find the courage to let the work go knowing it is good enough for the person I am at the time or I keep it away in a folder till I can read the same work with the fresh eyes needed to improve it.

The process for me takes both as much time as it does effort and the demands of both varies from poem to poem.

Please describe your sense of identity in this or any possible world in imagery or metaphor?

Daisy Odey: The closest identity I embody is that of water. Fluid, adaptable, under pressure to clean and under pressure to remain clean. That is how I explain my external impressions and internal turmoil.

Daisy Odey

If any of your poems could literarily save a person’s life, which poem would it be and can you describe the person whose life you think it would have saved?

Daisy Odey: The poem I would choose has not been published. It is a short one I wrote few years ago and recite to myself:

Behold each day with suspicion, 
like a river what will it bring or what will it take, 
standing in doorways I see an entry is also an exit, 
there is nothing to it-this living thing.

The words keep me grounded and it can be read as one of hope and one of caution, good days begin, and bad days also end. I would describe the person as one who wakes up and can find in that day a singular unit. Hold a vision for the future but revere the present moment. Even saving a life, such poignant action must happen within the tiny embrace of a day and something as small and insignificant as a minute.

What does Africa mean to you, as potential or reality?

Daisy Odey: Africa is first geography, a place in time. When I think of Africa in this way, I begin to name each country and its culture and by culture I mean our daily way of life. How we coexist with each other not the kind of materials we wear or rituals we practice – those are traditions. Who we are now is culture.

Next, Africa is an identity I embody. I have had the privilege of working with people from diverse cultures in that situation I become their frame of reference for Africa and her people. I might be the only African someone might interact with, and they will certainly leave with an impression. I understand my responsibility to this identity and in that way, Africa becomes very personal.

Finally, Africa is an idea, it is all the potential we see. What most Africans miss is actually how alike we really are. We need to think of ourselves as one and draw from our similarities while celebrating our differences. All our potential energy must become kinetic.

Could you share with us one poem you’ve been most impressed or fascinated by? Tell us why and share favorite lines from it.

Daisy Odey: I love Mary Oliver’s ‘Wild geese’. It is a poem that gives me permission to not be perfect. in a world that likes to consider itself black or white, good, or bad, nice or cruel. I aspire to such simplicity. I need that permission every now and then to always be work in progress:

Párádísè explores the theme of nostalgia, memories and friendship, and this poem is nothing short of wonder in the way it exudes magic with the story telling. What amazes me most is the ending of the poem and how the concluding rhetoric invokes a wide range of emotions in you. It reads thus:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.

Daisy Odey is a Nigerian poet. Her poems have appeared in Enkare Review, Ake Review, Kalahari Review, Afridiaspora, Praxis International Women’s Day Anthology, and others. She is the author of the chapbook “Fragments in a Closet,” included in New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Sita).

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Richard Ali

Richard Ali is a Nigerian writer whose poems were first published in 2008. He has served in the National EXCO of the Association of Nigerian Authors and sits on the board of Uganda’s Babishai Niwe Poetry Foundation. A member of the Jalada Writers Cooperative based in Nairobi, his work has been published in African Writing, Jalada, Saraba Magazine and elsewhere. The Anguish and Vigilance of Things is his debut collection, was published in 2020. He practices Law in Abuja, Nigeria.