Poets Talk: 5 Questions with Toni Kan

(A poem) is about the process of creation. You know women will tell you, some pregnancies are a breeze, others are torture. My laptop is filled with poems that have been “works in progress” for up to three years. . .

(A poem) is about the process of creation. You know women will tell you, some pregnancies are a breeze, others are torture. My laptop is filled with poems that have been “works in progress” for up to three years. . .

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

Toni Kan: If it was easy, everyone would be a poet, dude! That said, some poems come to you fully formed, some you have to work on like you are hefting a bag of rice up an incline. But those fully formed poems often come from moments of unconscious introspection realized in a gush.

So, I would say, it is not a matter of easy or hard work, it is about the process of creation. You know women will tell you, some pregnancies are a breeze, others are torture. My laptop is filled with poems that have been “works in progress” for up to three years, meanwhile there are some very good poems that I poured out in less than 10 minutes.

Konya Shamsrumi: Please describe your sense of identity in this or any possible world in imagery or metaphor?

Toni Kan: I am a man and I am full of contradictions. Consider me a coconut. You have to crack me open to enjoy me. Growing up, I had a stutter. When I came to Lagos after school, I begged God to take it away and He did. Sometimes, it rears its ugly head when I am very angry or when I am nervous, like in company of people I am not familiar with. Many people consider me aloof on account of this but once you become my friend you will consider me talkative. This is part of my coconut-ness.

Konya Shamsrumi: 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?

Toni Kan: I would be supremely arrogant to even consider the possibility of my poem saving someone’s life. A poem might delight, annoy, confuse, confound, move, exult, sadden, but save a life, no way!

I have a new poem that makes me very happy to read and I will share a bit here because of the range of emotions I think led to its birthing:

I sit by the sea shore
And dilute the ocean with my tears
Salt becomes sea becomes salt
Choice is a burden heavier than death
Especially the death of affection
But Bar Beach is insouciant
Coming and going these waves do not care
So, I sit and listen to my heart splinter
My broken heart bleeds, my eyes burn
Salt becomes sea becomes salt
But no matter how long I cry
Bar Beach will stay the same
This frothing thing with no end
Because you cannot dilute the ocean
With your tears.
 
Toni Kan

Konya Shamsrumi: What does Africa mean to you, as potential or reality?

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Toni Kan: Yesterday, one of Nigeria’s most gifted singers who just turned 50, sent me a WhatsApp message to acknowledge the 50th birthday wish I sent to her. As we chatted she asked me a question – tell me the truth, what do you think of this land? My answer was not original – the land is green!

I believe Africa will rise someday, maybe in my time or after because if you look at history, many places we now call developed were, to paraphrase a line from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, one of the dark places of the earth (at a point). Every people will have their time and Africa’s will come, but first we have to get some of these vagabonds in power out of the way.

Konya Shamsrumi: Could you share with us one poem you’ve been most impressed or fascinated by? Tell us why and share favorite lines from it.

I own a copy of Ted Hughes’ Birthday Letters, his critically acclaimed warts and all exploration and acknowledgement of his entanglement (couldn’t resist) with Sylvia Plath. I have had this book for many years but have never quite managed to finish the 87 poems that make up the collection. But, in all those years, I have found myself reading and re-reading the poem Sam about Sylvia Plath’s borrowed horse which almost killed her.

It is a visceral piece of poetry that manages to conjure the terror and fascination of the moment in a way that makes your breath catch in your throat every time you read it:

It was all of a piece to you
That your horse, the white calm stallion, Sam,
Decided he'd had enough
And started home at a gallop. I can live
Your incredulity, your certainty
That this was it. You lost your stirrups. He galloped
Straight down the white line of the Barton Road.
You lost your reins, you lost your seat -
It was grab his neck and adore him
Or free-fall. You slewed under his neck,
An upside-down jockey with nothing
Between you and the cataract of macadam,
That horribly hard, swift river,
But the propeller terrors of his front legs
And the clangour of the iron shoes, so far beneath you.

Toni Kan is the award-winning author of over 15 books of poetry, fiction and biographies.His books include the critically acclaimed works of fiction and poetry; The Carnivorous City, Nights of the Creaking Bed and When a Dream Lingers Too Long. He is co-founder of sabinews.com (the first Nigerian news website to be acquired by an investor); thisislagos.ng, the go-to website for all things Lagos and the literary magazine, thelagosreview.ng. Toni Kan, a fellow of the Heinrich Boll writing fellowship (Germany); Civitella Ranieri Writing Fellowship (Italy) and Yaddo Writing Fellowship (USA) is currently at work on a collection of poems with the working title – 50 Songs for Bar Beach (A Memorial in Verse)

Richard Ali
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Richard Ali is a Nigerian writer whose poems were first published in 2008. He has served in the National EXCO of the Association of Nigerian Authors and sits on the board of Uganda’s Babishai Niwe Poetry Foundation. A member of the Jalada Writers Cooperative based in Nairobi, his work has been published in African Writing, Jalada, Saraba Magazine and elsewhere. The Anguish and Vigilance of Things is his debut collection, was published in 2020. He practices Law in Abuja, Nigeria.