Zakiyyah Dzukogi: What is the process of writing a poem like for you? Is it a lot of hard work or easy?
Haneefah Abdulrahman: Poetry is my confidant. it is characterized by the power of concealment and mystery. Different people translate my poems in different ways but there is always the main reason that people can’t know. I hardly confide in people but it is very easy for me to confide in the poems I write.
Poetry comes from where the heart has been, where it might be in future and where it is. When people ask what inspires me, I say, “Me, everything, everyone and existence.” All that inspires me are connected to the heart.
There is always this urge to write about every single moment, experience and person, even some that may seem trivial. In a day, I write as much poetry as I allow myself to write. I am very generous with poetry. I write poems and even give them out to people for free. When my book, SHADES OF BECOMING (A collection of short stories) was unveiled, at first most people thought it was a collection of poems, they didn’t expect prose but well aren’t prose works also poetic? I breathe life into poetry and poetry breathes life into me. There is so much to say about the process of my poems.
Zakiyyah Dzukogi: Please describe your sense of identity in this or any possible world in imagery or metaphor.
Haneefah Abdulrahman: I could write an unending book describing my sense of identity so I will say the little I can start with the aid of some poems I wrote. The first I am going to share is titled Deity. which is all about my appreciation of being black, and African, it is also about self-esteem and it goes thus,
DEITY
I am my people’s deity
My mother’s sacredness
My opposition’s sacrilege
When they ask you
Tell them
That I am the colour that gives life to fire
I am the calming Tsunami
The Termite who doesn’t dwell with its kind but rules
The hunger for pain
The benefactor of the black race and beyond
I am the abandonment of the now without the then
Tell them of me
The adornment of each connecting galaxy
The Jasmine that births scents of harmony
The splashes of Pride on every soul that has tasted the honeyed magma of the thunderous volcano
I am the smile of the seven heavens
Who are you
If you are not of the black race
Whenever I perform this particular poem, it always feels like I have become the source of confidence.
Below is another one that describes the relationship between my confidence and fear, youth and the expectation of old age (I tend to think of death often). It is about hope in pain, me appreciating my physical beauty and reminding myself that it will fade. I try to strike a balance. The poem goes;
THE MUSE
I am Ogadinmma
Do not Crown yourself with despair
when the stars refuse to gleam
Mama taught me how to make the Tafetta that Ordain gleams
Oh moments of hope from the stars
A feast of light
I am Onovave
Do not shield yourself with fear when
Harmattan seems to inflict its blisters on nature
I am the undying reincarnation of the greens
Spring
Whistles
I am Aye
My Culture has taught me to be the Muse of hope
I am the African Muse.
There are several poems I wrote that describe my sense of identity but I will drop this last one titled “Red”
RED
This is not just me on a red veil
And a Flowery Dress
It is a blur entity
Not a Perfectionist
It is the Marriage of a Frown and a Smile set out to be a Neutral Expression in the creation of Truth
This is a piece of crumbled paper
Straightened by a lucky carrier who reads out the magic this letter holds
This me
Ordering Roses from earth
Sprouting all around Town
Building heaven’s heart in every being
This is red spitting other loving creatures all over my dress
The power of diversity
Red is diverse, a colour that has an immense impact on our emotions, spirituality, physical well-being etc. I am red; the flaws and perfection, taking control and losing it.
I will conclude with these words; I am the sky, a world of different phases, trying to strike a balance between being the moon, sun, cloud and rainbow.
Zakiyyah Dzukogi: 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?
Haneefah Abdulrahman: This is one of the most powerful questions I have come across. I will pick two of my poems. “I Thought I Saw It Coming” and “I Prayed for the Death of the Tree”.
‘I Thought I saw it Coming’ is the first poem I presented physically. I wrote this poem for a different reason but whenever I go back to read it I can’t help but think about someone very close to me that died out of a mistake made by their mother. He suffered, he couldn’t pass faeces through his anus, he could only do that through his belly where he was operated on, for the whole of the time he spent on earth. The mistake the mother made wasn’t intentional. Perhaps if she had seen the mistake coming she would have avoided it. It caused chaos, she was blamed for the complications he had when he was alive, and she was blamed for his death. I just feel this poem would save people from things like death, lesser than death but disastrous or more than death. We all go through that phase when we don’t know how we even make mistakes but I feel sometimes when we are careful few or some of them can be avoided.
I THOUGHT I SAW IT COMING
Here I am,
Here we come again,
In a dark world,
Known to people but understood by me.
I find myself standing face to face with
A mythical creature, a creature of horror
With its green scaly skin reflecting on me.
A spell has been cast.
It blew its breath of fire at my face,
Right into my soul.
Behold!
An exasperation has taken over me
My emotions have taken the best of me.
Righteousness has been taken from its abode
And locked up in a dungeon.
All the flaws have escaped from the dungeon of
My soul and they have set an arena for display.
I thought I imprisoned those flaws,
I thought I could control them,
I thought I will see them when they try to escape
So I could be careful.
I saw them walk not knowing that it was a race.
I have seen it come before I saw it coming.
I thought I saw the mistakes coming.
The second poem, “I Prayed for the Death of the Tree” saved my late Uncle who died a year ago. I see myself writing more poems inspired by him and the tree outside my window. He was a gardener and he was very good at his job. One of the reasons I loved him was because of the way he treated plants, he treasured them. The process of planting them, growing them and taking care of them was sacred. A few days after we moved to our house in 2018, my Dad asked him to come and plant Masquerade Trees in our compound. I don’t like Masquerade trees and somehow they just stayed, not becoming tall and not sprouting leaves. I was happy. To cut the story short, there was one stubborn one that decided to grow and it is right outside my window. I am grateful because it feels like my uncle lives in the tree and other plants he took care of before his death.
I PRAYED FOR THE DEATH OF THE TREE
The tree holds the memories of its planter
When I look out of my window
It carves images that reincarnate him
The planter
Appeased the soil as he cupped it
Smelt and spoke in low volumes
Like a connecting ritual
As he prayed for the growth of the trees
Six
I mumbled about my hate for it
A wish for another
He came almost every weekend
They refused to grow
He brought them food most time
A patient father he was
Weeks before he died
Five
They died
Five
A map to mourning
But one
The one outside my window
Would not die nor grow
I hated its arrogance
I prayed for its death but it spoke high volumes of
Life
It started to grow days after the planter died
I ask
“Are you there?
Breathing life into the tree? Stay.”
Zakiyyah Dzukogi: What does Africa mean to you, as potential or reality?
Haneefah Abdulrahman: Being an African isn’t only my nature. It is what I carry around proudly wherever I go. From the beginning of existence, Arts have been Africa and Africa is Arts. The Festivals, the tales by moonlit, the proverbs, the games and more! All over the world, African literature is one of the best. Our musicians are making waves. Generation by generation, our writers are always part of those at the top. The likes of Sadiq Dzukogi, Nnedi Okorafor, Onyeka Nwelue and others make me so proud to be an African Writer.
Africa is a reality. A great one!
Zakiyyah Dzukogi: Could you share with us one poem you’ve been most impressed or fascinated by? Tell us why and share your favourite lines from it.
Haneefah Abdulrahman: I read good poems. I don’t have a particular poem that I am most impressed by especially for the fact that we have so many poets who write great Poetry and I am always impressed by good poetry. I mean there are countless great poems from people like Rasaq Gbolahun, Suddie Vershima, and Umar Sidi, also from young people Salim Akko, Yahuza AbdulKadir, Pacella, Testimony, Sunday Saheed, Adepoju and you, of course, Zakiyyah Dzukogi and more. I read poetry widely, generation upon generation, Shakespeare’s generation, Christopher Okigbo’s generation etc. So I can’t pick a poem.
Nonetheless, I can share the best poem I have read so far today, “Mimesis’ by Fady Joudah. I love the simplicity and at the same time, the power it holds. I like the poet’s use of metaphor, the “Spider” and the “Web” in connection to the daughter’s reluctance to remove the web for she points out that people become refugees that way. The poem is about the homeless and losing one’s home.
My favourite lines?
I love all the lines in the poem!
This is one of the few times I love all the lines in a poem. Every word invokes power. Since the poem is short, I will just share it. Here;
My daughter
wouldn’t hurt a spider
That had nested
Between her bicycle handles
For two weeks
She waited
Until it left of its own accord
If you tear down the web I said
It will simply know
This isn’t a place to call home
And you’d get to go biking
She said that’s how others
Become refugees isn’t it?
Haneefah Abdulrahman is a writer, interviewer, spoken poetry artiste and podcaster from Nigeria whose work has appeared in Nigerian Review, Wisprout Project, Arts MuseFair, and elsewhere. She is a 2021 fellow of Ebedi International Writers Residency, a Pioneer fellow of Imodoye Writers’ Residency, and a Columnist at DailyTrust Newspaper. She is the Author of Shades of Becoming. She is the 2021 Winner of The Arewa Rising Literary Star. Born in Kaduna, Haneefah is an indigene of Kogi State. She is a student of English Literature at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. She is the Chairperson of the Kaduna Branch, Hill-Top Creative Arts Foundation, the 2021/ 2022 Chairperson of the Creative Writers Club, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria – Nigeria, the Assistant Editor of Literature Voices (LITVO) and the Editorial Assistant of the Moveee Magazine.
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