Zakiyyah Dzukogi: What is the process of writing a poem like for you? Is it a lot of hard work or easy?
Zainab Bobi: First of all, I will like to extend my appreciation to Konya Shamsrumi and to you, Zakiyyah, for giving me this opportunity. Thank you.
[Hmmm] To be frank, I don’t think I have a specific writing process. I write whenever the lines come to me. I think I find it difficult when I am writing a poem with a specific theme in mind. That is why most times, I only write when the lines come freely not when I force them to come.
Zakiyyah Dzukogi: Please describe your sense of identity in this or any possible world in imagery or metaphor.
Zainab Bobi: Yes, I use imagery and metaphors in my poems but I don’t think I can point out which I identify with. I will say I’m still exploring.
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?
Zainab Bobi: It will definitely be my poem, “What I Asked God in Sujood on a Friday Evening“, which was published in Eremite Poetry.
The poem is just a four-line poem but because of the depth the lines carry, it is and will always be my favourite.
This is the poem:
Oh lord,
Teach us how to be
Humans,
Again.
I think the poem, which is in form of a prayer, will save the whole of humanity if the depth of the message is carefully analyzed and understood.
Zakiyyah Dzukogi: What does Africa mean to you, as potential or reality?
Zainab Bobi: I think Africa is beyond the potential stage in terms of poetry. So, I will say reality because poetry in Africa is and will still be in existence. The rising of more literary magazines/journals and spaces will attest to that.
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.
Zainab Bobi: Ok. I will say my experimental poem, “Set Operation of a Country in the Belly of Wa(te)r“, which was published in Strange Horizons.
I’m someone who doesn’t have much faith in her works. When the poem was published, I have to go back and reread the poem because of the responses it received. That was when I get to understand how lines resonated with a lot of people.
It is a poem I wrote in the form of a mathematical topic, Set Operation. When writing it, I try to relate some of the terms that are used in Set Operation; union, intersection, inverse, null set, and complement, to the crisis that has been having in Nigeria and the world as a whole. Just as how we solve mathematical questions at school, I gave a work problem at the beginning of the poem and then proceeded to solve the problem.
My favourite lines in the poem are the last three lines.
c. [p ∪ (2021 ∪ 2022)] ∪ [inverse of (p) = {}]
let the inverse of empty be filled with the roses of our mother’s prayers.
let the inverse of void be the emancipation of our bodies from bullets flood.
let the inverse of p = {} birth a country where dreams aren’t conveyed on paper boats.
I love these lines because of the optimistic voice they hold.
Zaynab Bobi, Frontier I, is a Nigerian poet, digital artist and photographer from Bobi. She is a finalist of the voice of peace anthology, member of Hilltop Creative Art Abuja, Poetry Club Udus, Frontier Collective, and a Medical Laboratory Science student of Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto. Her poems are published and forthcoming in Kalahari Review, Sledgehammer Lit, PraxisMag, Paddler Press, WRR, Overhead Literary Magazine, Melbourne Culture Corner, Ice Floe Press, Lunaris Review, Rigorous Magazine, Olit Magazine, The Shallow Tales Review, and more. She tweets @ZainabBobi.
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