Poets Talk: 5 Questions with Dare Tunmise

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

Dare Tunmise: While I think this is a tricky and difficult question, in that there’s no one way to writing a poem, I’d like to think the birth of a poem, for me, follows sequences of rituals which depends on the need or urgency to have such poem out there. I’m really not the type of poet or writer to flip a page open and set aside a particular time to write, and while this may not be writerly, I’d like to think of it as a forte, because it makes writing easy for me without the need to be put under pressure.

Most of the poems I write comes from a place of epiphany, but these epiphanies too are not accidental since they are thoughts, feelings and emotions that have gone through subconscious grooming or an internal workshop. Let’s take for instance, Richard, you’re walking through an open market, say in Mile 12, you catch sight of a seller and on her tray are cow skins on folded display like failed taxidermy; or in a chaotic part of town, you watch a flight of birds took off a tree after a gunshot and you imagine them as diacritics running off letters. These are imageries but they don’t leave your mind. They stay with you, you ferry them through the distance, time over time, they become an aquifer of songs lodged inside you, they ripen into a melody. Then one evening, while taking a shower or maybe you’re just somewhere catching up with friends over drinks, you burst open into verses— a lyrical harvest, you’re typing into your note app, and in few minutes, you already have a poem.

But let’s not forget the other technicalities involved in making a poem. You can string all the imageries and metaphors together and think you’re winning the next big thing, until the editor’s note arrives in the mail and your best poem is littered with footnotes and yellow highlights.

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

Dare Tunmise: Identity is fluid for me if I have to be honest. And while I have a certain behavioural framework under which I operate, I have a wide range of interests as a creative. You can find me talking about software, or painting, with the same level of interest I have for language. I have never doubted my ability to evolve as a person.

Dare Tunmise

Konya Shamsrumi: 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?

Dare Tunmise: To think I’ve written something substantial enough to save a life is a really generous question that I have not once given a thought until now. Maybe some people have written works like that, or maybe when we admit that a work saved our life what we really mean is that it lent us a mirror to look deeper into ourselves.

I believe, as poets, majority of what we do is the work of preservation. I’m learning to keel into this, and it is what I’m actively trying to achieve with my own work — Inheriting losses as collectibles and doing the steadfast work of safekeeping. Thinking now of the wide margin between consolation and saving, consolation being the generous escape poetry offers us, if any of my poems were to be an object at the site of a shipwreck, it won’t be the lifeboat, but an anchor tied to the sinking ship, I think Plath will agree with this.

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

Dare Tunmise: I think Africa holds many possibilities, and to me, it is both a reality and a potential. In the scope of our current state, speaking of political instability, poverty, healthcare disparities, and infrastructure gaps compared to other parts of the world, it is a reality because these things shape and influence our works and also dictates the kind of access and opportunities we are exposed to. Also, when you think about the magic people are creating despite the harsh economic reality and the limited opportunities available, you don’t need to be fortune teller to understand the big potential that is this wide continent. I’m a believer in this potential, too.

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

Dare Tunmise: I’m a sucker for good poetry, but I think one particular poem that stayed with me is a poem by the talented poet, ‘Gbenga Adeoba.

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:

…In this version, comrades, our furtive walks
to that expanse do not outrank
the doting guard and his familiar lexicon.
Praise to his open arms and fruit gifts.
Praise, too, to his magic of measuring time
by the shift of the sun, and to those worn
copies of Awake! and The Watchtower,
his flailing arms and sermon to winds:
“A máa pàdé níbo o? Páá-ráá-díí-sè!” *
What songs did we raise for the old man
and all kind men we knew—
our fathers’ friends, our friends’ fathers?

Dare Tunmise is a Nigerian poet and essayist. Drawing inspiration from Yoruba folklore, rap and popular culture, his writings explore the interplay between reality and imagination as he seeks to unravel the wonders and intricacies of the modern human mind and the complexities existing within contemporary existence. His debut chapbook manuscript was selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani for the African Poetry Book Fund and set to be published by Akashic Books, Brooklyn, New York in the Spring of 2024. He works in Lagos as a Software Developer.

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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.