Zakiyyah Dzukogi: What is the process of writing a poem like for you? Is it a lot of hard work or easy?
Laker Patience: When I first started out, writing poems was deliberate. I’d sit down with a notebook, pick a topic and start writing. It was neither hard nor necessarily easy, it felt like homework. The poems weren’t bad but felt stiff, and generic like the words found in a greeting card, I later came to learn that what they lacked was me and all the flavours of my lived experience.
Now my writing process mostly involves me being ambushed by words in any situation. I could be studying for a test at 3 am while sitting on my balcony and then a line pops into my head and the moment I zero in on it, I realize it’s not the only passenger on that particular train of thought, and then it’s a race between my hands and my brain that keeps on supplying lines. I like to say that all my favourite poems come to me in a moment. That moment can be a couple of minutes to a couple of hours where my brain is locked on nothing else but that poem until it feels done, and then I go back and edit it. Honestly speaking that’s not always the case times I’ll come across (within the confines of my mind mostly but not always) a line or two and that’s it for the day, I’ll write it down and put it away until another line comes my way that seems to fit like a jigsaw puzzle or another word vomit session commences.
Music is a big part of my writing process. I’ve lost count of the number of times a song was playing and something both in my brain and soul was triggered. Sometimes I’ll have to play one song on a loop just so I can cling to a certain headspace.
Zakiyyah Dzukogi: Please describe your sense of identity in this or any possible world in imagery or metaphor.
Laker Patience: My Sense of identity is self-expression and its evolution. I believe I am constantly changing and that’s okay because the one constant in the world is changing. But like in the evolution of a species the core bits of DNA that form the genetic makeup of an evolved species are inherently the same.
I feel this applies to me because no matter what changes I go through. I try to keep the core elements of self unchanged. I try to remain authentic to my person and always be “me”. Like I am dark-skinned and beautiful, I am deserving of life, I was born to the best version of Laker Patience and no one else.
In a fantastical sense. My Sense of identity hangs on the belief that I’m possessing of magic (truly all humans are but some are more in tune with it). To quote a line from a poem by Rudy Francisco..” I have battery-operated confidence”…I am not a naturally confident person..well more accurately I once was, at the age, before life hits you so maybe not since I was 10.
I have always believed that I was meant to perform. Since my earliest memories, though at the time I thought it’d be through music. poetry didn’t hit me until way later.
But when I step on a stage and perform or even when I get to share my poems with others, the rush I receive from feedback is such a heady drug especially when I have been fortunate to have mostly positive feedback. It’s helped my spine unfold and caused my head and shoulders to remember I stand fully at the height of 5’11 and not whatever I read as my body imitates a question mark.
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?
Laker Patience: I’ll start off by saying that as of now I know one life my poems have saved and that’s mine. Yes. Really..no matter how cringe that would sound it’s the truth. But the question is about a specific poem and its potential to save someone else.
The mind is such a fickle thing, it’s the reason why we as people have the potential to be our own biggest enemy. This is one of the reasons I preach self-love. It may seem obvious and all played out through hush tags and every other form of media. But it’s still a thing and lots of people ( or should I say most people) still struggle with it to this day with devastating consequences.
One of the poems of mine I’d suggest is on the newer side and kinda and by that I mean a lot on the nose with its title..”SELF LOVE”. I’ll share a little excerpt:
“… It’s been eight years..eight, really, really long years since I decided to love myself
But self-love,
Self-love is a journey without a destination, with pitstops along the way for maintenance and fuel,
Your car will break down often, usually in the middle of nowhere with no gas station in sight.
Self-love is like a seed carefully planted in a garden competing with the kin of weeds such as insecurities, anxiety and doubts that had previously reigned supreme,
They germinated, sprouted, bloomed and seeded, propagated season after season
Resilient, their seeds plentiful in the layers of your soil
Self-love is a garden in constant need of attention, from watering to mulching and the occasional addition of fertilizer
Self-love is a garden in constant need of weeding,
It’s hard work ”
Zakiyyah Dzukogi: What does Africa mean to you, as potential or reality?
Laker Patience: Africa to me is like an old big house that’s kinda rundown, sorta neglected but choke full of charm and memories. She’s home, one that we’re inheriting from generations older and past. Her foundation is solid, all she needs is some elbow grease and TLC for her to shine like the gem she is.
Africa is so full of potential, she’s at risk of saturating the market. All she needs Is for her inheritors to put in the work.
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.
Laker Patience: I’ve had the pleasure of engaging with numerous poems of all calibres. Lot of poets I aspire to be like. But the poem I share today may not be considered the greatest, I don’t even know it’s the title but all that matters is that when I listened to it for the first time, the place in life it found me, had this poem resonating with me.
It was performed by one of my favourite poets/ artistes’ Sampa The Great in the music video for her song “Black Girl Magik“
“… I wrote this psychosis for sister’s like me.
With skin as dark as the night that shines so effortlessly.
I wrote this for my sister,
who looks in the mirror and calls out to beauty who can longer see her.
No one can describe who you are.
But you are, who you are, who you are .
Who are you?!
Magic…. Black Magic..
”
Laker Patience is a Ugandan-based poet currently living and working in Kampala. She’s currently a full-time performing poet. She had the pleasure of performing in different parts of the country with the hopes of crossing borders with her poetry soon. She has worked with different organisations like PHAU that deal with public health and is a proud member of the IMARA poets which is associated with Female based organization FOWODE.
Social handles:
IG @Laker.p_poet
TikTok @Laker a poet
You Tube @Laker a poet
