Poet’s Talk: 5 Questions with Sunday Saheed

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

Saheed Sunday: I remember starting to write poetry at a very early age, although unconsciously at the time. Then, I wrote many poems because I simply wanted to, not necessarily because the poem was worth it. Albeit many literati would argue that any work of art—conscious or otherwise—has a distinctive existence of its own, I hold the feeling that most of my works back then didn’t qualify to be called “poetry.” I simply wrote them to constantly nail down the fact that I was a poet, too, in my head. During my insentient period of writing, I always had the title before the poem. I didn’t realise it at the time, but my poetry was led by it. It impeded my imaginative mind and the ability to spread wings and be a dot in the vast sky. The title contained everything I wanted to write in a cube, clipping off all the overlapping parts.

I started writing poetry consciously around August 2021. That was two years ago, and I’m so glad to see how far I have improved. The process of my conscious writing is so stale—uninteresting, so to speak. It will be hard for anyone but me to attest to that, though, because I am usually too shy to write when my eyes are fixated on me. It makes me too aware of my physical surroundings, and I thus get excommunicated from the imaginative milieu.

I don’t find writing poems hard; I only find creating the time for it difficult. In fact, for anything written at all, the decision to create a time is divine. It will interest you to know that I don’t lead my poems, unlike before. Once I start with a word, I simply let everything pan out by itself, untamed and unrestricted, and it always comes out well. at least for me (since beauty is subjective, hehe).

Zakiyyah Dzukogi: Please describe your sense of identity in this or any possible world in imagery or metaphor.

Saheed Sunday: If I hadn’t known that leaves wither away, it would have been my preferred choice. But then, I would say “a hornbill” because of its unconventional nature and individuality. I just got to know the English name of the bird a few months ago. We Yoruba have always known it as àkàlàmàgb, and it is noted culturally for its long life. There are a whole lot of other qualities in the hornbill, but only two of those things would describe my sense of identity: uniqueness and having a lasting time at it.

I have come to know that things that are out of the norm thrill me. Around some time in 2022, I wrote many queer poems. Although I didn’t publish most of them, the ones that were published can create the impression that I am one. The same thing applies to poems that revolve around colour (although I think this one was influenced by Wright’s books and one of Adedayo Agarau’s posts about how he was thrashed by a white kid in a literary event).

I’m neither queer nor have I ever known what it feels like to be treated according to the colour of my skin. But I write these things anyway. I have read different articles about how writers can fail to communicate, or not communicate at all when they write about things they haven’t experienced firsthand. Say a Nigerian poet is writing about snow. But I don’t conform to this view. I, for one, bear the notion that people’s feelings can be read into until one feels what they feel, even if it can’t be overemphasised. Writers are contortionists of the imagination. Writing things you haven’t felt is a thing, too. William Wordsworth attested to that with his view of the functions of a poet as someone with “heightened sensibility.”


Zakiyyah Dzukogi: If any of your poems could literarily save a person’s life, which one would it be, and can you describe the person whose life you think it would have saved?

Saheed Sunday: I don’t believe any of my poems can save a person’s life. I mean, at least it can’t save mine. The best thing my poem has done is console me. I remember writing a poem after losing someone I hold dearly, Birdsongs. Writing it helped me ease the pain, but I am reminded of that pain every time I read it again. Oh, that rhymes, hehe. In short, I rarely write reflective poems, so I doubt if my poems can save a person’s life.

Zakiyyah Dzukogi: What does Africa mean to you, as potential or reality?

Saheed Sunday: Africa is a reason for me. I wouldn’t underemphasize the importance of how much I’ve kept picking myself up to reach or surpass the standards of people I look up to. There are simply so many of them that I doubt one can exhaust them all. So, literally, sometimes when I’m about to falter, Africa becomes a mirror, showing me the reflections of the great people I can still be but haven’t yet become.

Zakiyyah Dzukogi: Could you share with us one poem with which you’ve been most impressed or fascinated? Tell us why, and share your favourite lines from it.

Saheed Sunday: The poem with which I am most impressed and fascinated is Billy Collins’s Introduction to Poetry. I have read better poems, but none of them beats the simplicity and ‘on-pointedness’ of the poem, which is hardly addressed. Different people can read different meanings into it, but the motif of loss of communication it foregrounds is what interests me the most.

I was telling one of my friends some months ago about how contemporary poetry can sometimes be synonymous with crooked poetry. I have read many poems where there is a struggle between the poet and the poem about the coherence of the lines. It is saddening when I read a poem and see how much communication and message have been lost. I was guilty of this once too—focusing more on the manner than the matter, on the form rather than the content—but of what essence is a work of art when communication is lost?