Zakiyyah Dzukogi: What is the process of writing a poem like for you? Is it a lot of hard work or easy?
Nasiba Babale: It is mostly easy. I typically write a poem in one sitting. Especially those poems that come from a deeply emotional place. You know those that hold you by the neck and demand to be let out. The ones difficult to write are typically the ones I delay in writing. Like when I got the inspiration but didn’t write immediately, until after some days maybe, or weeks. Whenever I sit down to write those ones, they give me a tough time.
Zakiyyah Dzukogi: Please describe your sense of identity in this or any possible world in imagery or metaphor.
Nasiba Babale: I believe I am a wanderer.
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?
Nasiba Babale: How to Survive Being Single. It would save the life of anyone drowning in the burden of being single in a world that values doubles.
Zakiyyah Dzukogi: What does Africa mean to you, as potential or reality?
Nasiba Babale: Africa, to me, is both. It is a potential in that it can grow and develop to be better than it is today. It is a reality because it is here now; we are in it today. It is in us.
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.
Nasiba Babale: I am fascinated by a lot of poems, and it is difficult to choose. I will go with Rose Milligan‘s Dust if You Must. The poems speak to how much we dwell on the chores of life, the duties, the responsibilities, and the things we believe we must do while ignoring the beauty, the thrill, the love, the life, the light. I love the poem.
Dust if you must, but the world’s out there,
With the sun in your eyes,
And the wind in your hair,
A flutter of snow, a shower of rain,
This day will not come around again.
Naseeba Babale is a poet, literary administrator, and medical laboratory scientist with the Department of Chemical Pathology and Immunology at the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital. She is a member of the Association of Nigerian Authors (Kano State Branch), the Secretary of the Poetic Wednesdays Initiative, and moderator for Glass Door Initiative’s Poetically Written Prose Contest 2019 and 2020. She was one of the Nigerian Students Poetry Prize judges, 2020, organized by Poets In Nigeria. She was a co-organizer of TEDxAminuKanoWay. A graduate of Bayero University, Kano, Naseeba loves arts and is a columnist for Konya Shams Rumi. She hails from Kano State of Nigeria.
