Zakiyyah Dzukogi: What is the process of writing a poem like for you? Is it a lot of hard work or easy?
Hassana Maina: Poetry comes to me with a sense of urgency, and it is in this sense that I’ve to pen something down. It comes to me like a running stomach where you just have to ease yourself. The process is normally an urgent need to write about something, most of the time, I don’t know what it is I’m writing about, the words force themselves out and it’s mostly when I’m done writing that I get the theme of it. The process is very different from writing any other thing, an essay requires planning, but with poetry, it comes like a rush of emotions demanding to be let out with words.
Zakiyyah Dzukogi: Please describe your sense of identity in this or any possible world in imagery or metaphor.
Hassana Maina: My sense of identity can be best described to come from a strong place of self. I have a strong sense of self and that has always helped me in being aware, living in my body and interact with the world. My self of identity comes from a place of my imagination as well. I’ve always imagined myself since I was a little girl, to be ascending a staircase and I got the first image of that assertion when I was in primary 2 or 3 since then I’ve always looked up to that little girl and I’ve seen her grow in my mind and to me, that best explains who I’m. I do not drive who I’m from the outside, I drive it from within myself- a place of imagination.
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?
Hassana Maina: I think it’s the poem that I titled “I lost the baby” because that was the words of my friend who found out she was pregnant and was so excited and after some time, she just said I lost the baby and I didn’t know what to do other than write, and I wrote the poem. Whenever I hear anyone lose their child or have a miscarriage, words from that poem come to my mind and I wish the words would come alive and that child will come back to the mother. The line that strikes me most in the poem is;
Tell me this baby
Tell me that hearts connected can never be lost
I think that’s one poem that could save a person’s life, and I think it’s for all the babies that have been lost through miscarriages- those whose mothers were excited to have them, wanted to feel them and live life with them, but unfortunately, they left without being fully formed
Zakiyyah Dzukogi: What does Africa mean to you, as potential or reality?
Hassana Maina: Africa to me is a collection of possibilities, both for an individual and as a whole. It means something that can be very different and feels like home because Africa is not homogeneous, it’s very diverse and filled with different cultures. Africa means the different selves, Identities, and altered spirits that exist in one body, and Africa as a continent is different from Africa as an idea that we have in our heads, like when we say Mama Africa or when people tattoo the map of Africa on their bodies, or like having an African map pendant. It’s a continent of different people that somehow despite the diversity, have a unified pride that flows through the diverse bodies or areas. For me, I look at Africa as a continent, a being, the present, Africa as what we can see, Africa as its metaphysical nature and as the collective idea that flows through us by the virtue of being in its geography. So yes, this is what Africa means to me, it means being bound in some sort of beautiful shared ideas and identity.
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.
Hassana Maina: The poem is titled “Poems about my rights” and it is by Jane Jordan I’ll be sharing a few lines:
Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear
my head about this poem about why I can’t
go out without changing my clothes my shoes
my body posture my gender identity my age
my status as a woman alone in the evening/
alone on the streets/alone not being the point/
the point being that I can’t do what I want
to do with my own body because I am the wrong
sex the wrong age the wrong skin…
This poem means so much to me, when I was writing my essays during my masters at SOAS, London, I quoted the poem over and over again, It’s easily my best poem because I feel it captures everything- people’s ideas on sexual violence, Racism, Imperialism, Colonialism, it captures issues that are deeply rooted in our world today. Connecting the poem back to the previous question, about what Africa means to me, the poem answers all the whys, “oh why is Africa like this?”, “Why is Africa still part of the global south?”, the poem captures everything including white supremacy, and white violence against black skin and these made it my favourite poem.
Hassana Umoru Maina is a lawyer, poet and Gender Consultant with over 3 years of experience. She coordinated a standstill rally across eight northern states in Nigeria to push for the domestication of the VAPP Act under the NorthNormal platform. She runs a weekly program on her Instagram, the #ABCsOFSexualViolence, where she invites guests from all works of life to normalise the conversations on sexual violence and break the culture of silence and shame that surrounds the topic.
Hassana Maina was also involved in the #SecureOurLives project as the research and documentation officer, with a job description that included documenting the profiles of people that have died in Nigeria due to the ongoing insecurity.
Hassana Umoru Maina won the Future Africa Awards Prize for activism in 2020 among other recognition.
She’s currently a master’s student at SOAS, the University of London studying Law with a specialism in development and globalisation.
She’s the Executive Director of ASVOIL Support Initiative, a non-profit aiming to create awareness of the dangers of sexual violence in the lives of children and young adults.
- Poet’s Talk: 5 Questions with Nasiba Babale - September 5, 2023
- Poet’s Talk: 5 Questions with Ibraheem Uthman - August 29, 2023
- Poet’s Talk: 5 Questions with Zakiyyah Dzukogi - August 19, 2023
