Poets Talk: 5 Questions with Enigma Kreative

The small things that build up the social tapestry of our lives as we know them are often lost in translation. I find myself picking them all up in bits and pieces when I look at images.

The small things that build up the social tapestry of our lives as we know them are often lost in translation. I find myself picking them all up in bits and pieces when I look at images.

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

Enigma Kreative: Often, I find myself at a crossroads of sorts when the urge to write stems up in me. It is often an intricate balance between all the things I want to say and all the ways I want to say them. The only constant catalyst in all my creative processes is music. Not just any music, the calm introspective kind. Music has a way of calming the chaos in my mind and bringing me down to a tempo I can usurp (in) my writing. Often pictures speak to me in ways that many other forms of art do not. I often find myself filling in the gaps of the stories that pictures imply. I see images and work a narrative for myself that is pure poetry, at-least for both myself and the people who read my work.

Is it hard work? I don’t think so. It is almost as if I am embodied by the poems I write and they express themselves through my writing for a short while just before they leave.


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

Enigma Kreative: I believe I would be the modern-day embodiment of Khalil Gibran. He was a sage of poetry. He described all his work in prose that was deeply poetic and he had a way of writing it all down and speaking it out that was intense and simple, elegant and common place. I would most likely fit through the cracks and crevices of an understanding of the deep truths that we let slip away. The small things that build up the social tapestry of our lives as we know them are often lost in translation. I find myself picking them all up in bits and pieces when I look at images. I identify as a storyteller who finds stories in the most overlooked places and who finds a way of sewing them together to establish a narrative worthy of time on stage and on pages.

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?

Enigma Kreative: The poem called Society’s Creed. It speaks about a host of the social issues that plague our society as depicted by a news briefing I happened to watch one evening. It embodies a message of hope. I think it would save the life of anybody who was desperate for a ray of hope, or an awakening of it.

Enigma Kreative, in performance.


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

Enigma Kreative: When I look at the continent and the work I have been part of across its various territories, I am confident in the power the youth of Africa have to engage in conversation with each other. I look at Africa as a continent that has only just begun in its journey to self-realization and one with the youthful advantage to have youthful African solutions to African problems. We only need to find platforms and avenues to unite us young people in an unanimity that makes our diversity a strength.

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.

Enigma Kreative: I love a poem called I Come from a Place by a poet called Titilope Sonuga. I love the poem because it speaks to the everyday things that make our continent the cultural pot it is. In this poem she uses ordinary scenarios that can be used to embody African Socialism. Ultimately, she describes a thriving operational society in the backdrop of a number of great challenges that do not stop Africa from moving forward. I love that depiction of Africa because it does not take away from us the ability and resolve to cover our bases and meet our needs our problems notwithstanding.

I Come From A Place by Titilope Sonuga

Enigma Kreative is a Kenyan born citizen of Africa. He carries with him a great passion for the African continent and espouses it through his engagement on all issues in Africa through Artistic expression. He is a Storyteller and Spokenword artist who uses his proficiencies in Human centered design, creative writing, branding and marketing to build the capacity of artists within his collective, The ANIKA Initiative, and in his private practice as an event organizer, performer, communications consultant and artist manager. He champions for the use of art in enhancing education and literacy for the Sustainable development goals, Human Trafficking, Mental Health, Human rights and Refugee issues. Entertainment is just a by product of the artistic process of expression and it pales in reflection to the immensely huge potential Art has to achieve.       

Richard Ali
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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.