Anger is important to the writer (interview)

NNW: Let?s start with a brief biography of yourself.
Niyi Osundare: I am a village-born boy who happen to be a university teacher. I was born in Ikere­-Ekiti, Ekiti State, in 1947 and lived there and had my secondary school there at Amoye Grammar School. From there I went to Christ School, Edo­-Ekiti, for higher education. And then I went on to the University of Ibadan where I read English from 1969 to 1972. And in 1973 the University of Ibadan gave me a scholarship to study at the University of Leeds. I did my masters there and returned to Nigeria in 1974. And I started my teaching career at the University of Ibadan that year. Two years later the university gave me another scholarship to pursue my Ph.D. programme in the United States. I did that and returned in 1979. And I have been teaching at the University of Ibadan since then. Of course, I?ve had the occasion to go out several times. I have been out of the country for the past four years and I have just come back.

Yes, as an academic. I?ve been at the University of New Orleans, USA, for my sabbatical. Another reason why I went out has to do with a family problem. One of our children, Tola, a highly gifted girl, is deaf. And she is a fantastic artist and a very compassionate human being. My wife and I ran around from the north of this country to the south, we could not find anything for her. So we had to take her to the U.S. and now she is receiving a lot of attention.
Now, what is there to know more about me...? I am a writer. Writing for me is not just a matter of putting pen to paper. It is a passion. And I commit myself in every word I put down. Basic at the back of my mind before I sit down to write anything is the advancement of the course of justice and truth. Whether it is my poetry, plays, academic essays or the occasional articles I send to Nigerian newspapers, what is primary in my mind is how my writing will advance the course of truth and justice in our country, on our continent and in our world. I am not a prophet, I am an ordinary human being. I believe I have a lot at stake in our society as it is at the moment. And I believe I owe it as a duty to contribute something towards making it a better place. So art for me is not just a vocation, it is life.

My growing up in Ikere­Ekiti gave me a very strong oral base, which subsequently inspired me into writing. In addition to being a farmer, my father was a drummer, a singer and song composer. He was also a fine conversationalist. I always liked to be in his company when he was talking with his friends. My mother was a cloth weaver and a good singer too. She also has a fantastic memory.
By the time I got to secondary school, I already had an eye on literature. My literary interest was further enhanced by the fact that the kind of secondary school I attended stressed humanities, because it was too poor to afford science laboratory. I had to study Latin, English, Yoruba, History and Geography. That was how it all started. And as for my cosmopolitan views as reflected in my works; it has to do with the nature of my place of birth. Because of the central nature of Ikere-Ekiti, we were living with diverse tribes from many parts of Nigeria. Among my play mates were Hausa, Urhobo, Ibo etc. When I grew up and saw what the politicians were doing I was shocked. Many of our people had the same background I had as a child, but they had not survived the shock. So they were sucked into that divisive system. I cannot be sucked into that system. Art for me is so important because it touches different aspects of our lives. And it is universal.

Both. You know, my academic area is stylistics. First, I am always interested in the communicative bridge between the encoder and the decoder. When you have stood on the podium and talked and talked, and in the end the people asked; "What has he said," it means you haven?t communicated at all. Secondly, oral literature, which has an overwhelming influence on me, is essentially simple. They are simple but at the same time very delicate and complex. They have the transparency of a deep river. You can see the sand from feet above, but you dare not jump into it unless you know how to swim. I believe that there is nothing, no matter how complex, a good writer should not be able to say in simple words. My most difficult poems are my simple poems. I tell my creative writing students this all the time. It is not difficult to string words together. All it takes is to open a Thesaurus and start writing Gbidibility, Gidigidibility, and put them together and call them a poem. And your reader will sweat and sweat and throw the thing away and never want to read anything by you again. Not only that, they may even be discouraged from reading things by other people.
So I said let?s put it simple, straight, but let?s put it in an artistic way. I was anxious to create an audience for poetry in Nigeria. That?s why I started this poetry in newspaper in 1983. And I discovered that at the time I was doing this, the New Nigerian newspaper had a thriving poets? corner, edited by Al-Bishak. I was collecting the poems and using them in the classroom. And, in fact, I did something on newspaper poetry in Nigeria as an academic research. So my simple style is an impulse. And finally, I believe there are so many social problems in Nigeria that need urgent attention. And writing has to be relevant in finding the solution to all those problems. You cannot solve the problems if you don?t touch the people. You cannot touch the people if you speak in the language they do not understand.

From your Songs of the Market Place published in 1983 to your Waiting Laughters published in 1999, you?ve been attacking the ills of the society. We are now in 2001; would you say your poems in these collections have made any difference in terms of changing the Nigerian society?

The question is a double-barreled gun. Let me take it barrel by barrel [laughter]. I will begin by saying yes, I?m a strong believer in the transformative power of the word. There is no religion that I have come across that hasn?t said something about the word, especially about the origin of the word and how the word has helped to transform the world. I believe writers have a role to play in society. In fact, one of the first major essays I wrote, The Writer as a Righter, is on this. And I was inspired to write that way because from my study of the history of this country and that of other parts of the world; I realized that there is no civilization that has developed without thinkers and writers taking part in it. In all traditions worldwide, the bard was regarded as a very powerful person. He composed songs and satires. And people fear satires. I remember very well, in Ikere-Ekiti where I grew up, before the coming of law courts, it was the poet that was literally the enforcer of the law; because if you committed any infraction, songs would be composed against you. The whole town would sing it. And that would force you to leave the town. Nobody will tell you to leave, shame will push you away. Our country is in a terrible state today because our people seem to have lost that sense of shame. The criminals ride to town on horse back and people clap for them. So, writing has a lot of influence on us. Writing does affect our consciousness. But when we talk about the writer, who do we really mean? I am not talking about jingoists, chauvinists or writers who put their pen where power is. And we see a lot of that happening in our country today. Quite a lot of our writers have lost their conscience and they now work in the corridors of power. Well, you may say there is nothing wrong in a writer tasting a little bit of power. But I say there is a lot wrong. Because the closer you are to power, the more complacence you become as a thinker and as a writer, the more ready you are to justify the iniquities that you would have railed against in the past. Most important, you will lose your anger. And anger is important to the writer. I?m not talking about destructive, explosive type of anger. No, I?m talking about that ability to feel compassionately for other human beings, especially for the downtrodden. To feel hungry when you see a hungry woman or man. To hear the haunting lyrics in the bowl of the beggar. To see the lice in the hair of a madman let loose in the streets. This was where we began. But now quite a number of us seem to believe it does not pay to be with the people. So you want to work in the corridors of power. This destroys the credibility of the writer and the art. And it exposes the writer to the vagaries of the powerful person. And the writer loses in the end.
No powerful person ever a trusts a writer, especially when that writer is a genuine one. From time immemorial the relationship between the emperor and the poet has always been a problematic one. The emperor wields a very large sword while the writer wields that little thing in his hand with a metal tip, the stylus. But the little pen out-lasts the sword of the tyrant and creates works and visions that out-lasts the power of the tyrant. The emperor is always conscious of this and he is always trying to do something to contain the writer. But it is the duty of the writer to back away and watch his vision.

Well, it all depends on what kind of government. The writer has no business with a dictatorial government or one who does not recognize culture, whose ideas and policies are antihuman. Because art is essentially humane. Writing which is a very important aspect of art is essential humane and humanizing. A democratic government that takes care of the interests of the people, that has vision for the people and the country, a government where leaders read books regularly; why should a writer turn his or her back on such government? I have known many leaders who are good readers. Bill Clinton, the former president of the United States, for instance; he is a constant reader. Hence, he has a wide knowledge of science, social sciences and literature. He knows the value of books. And so was the assassinated leader of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara. He constantly said literature and the arts should be used to transform society. That is why poor Burkina Faso has the most important film festival in Africa. It is a matter of vision. When Nkrumah came to power, he did not only support the Uhuru Dance Band and the Ramblers? Dance Band, whenever he was going on an international tour, he took one of them with him. We are talking about leaders who know what culture is, what the power of the book is, and who knows the problems of writers. Such leaders won?t allow writers and literature to suffer. And they are not likely to put the National Theatre of their country on sale. So I will say co-operation depends on the kind of government. But basically, my own belief is that the writer has no business with a leader whose vision is anti­human. Because that kind of vision is at loggerheads with the vision of the genuine writer. And that is why several times people have come to me with political appointments and I have turned them down. To begin with, I am not looking for a job. Secondly, I have never believed that I?m not doing the right thing. I am a teacher and a writer. And I am a scholar. I am absolutely satisfied, because I believe I?m contributing something great to the development of this country. And that the other writers are also contributing something great to the development of this country. There is nothing, in my own belief, that is greater than being in the position to influence the minds of the future, to develop them in the right way. One Achebe, one Wole Soyinka, has done more for this country than a thousand presidents or Major-Generals or diplomats have done. Who remembers how many houses Shakespeare built or how powerful he was as a political figure? His works have lived after him.

Turbulent. Turbulent! A lot of writing is getting done by young aspiring writers. Some of them are well done, very neat. Others are just put together by roadside publishers. But the spirit inspires and impresses me. But at the same time it also disturbs me. The Nigerian literary scene should be more organized. Writers should not be as hungry as they are. When I talk about writers, I?m not just talking about poets, dramatists and novelists. I?m also talking about journalists. That wall that people often build between the so-called serious writers and the so­called journalists is an artificial wall, and a very primitive one, very unprogressive. Example abound worldwide of writers who started out as journalists. Most of our Nigerian writers are also journalists. The welfare of this people should be taken into account because they are also writers. Writing of any kind, especially if it is good, is never easy.
So the Nigerian literary scene is turbulent, as I said. And full of promise. Typically Nigerian; never saying die. But at the same time, typically Nigerian; unorganized, chaotic. I want us to take this chaos from our life and put in some order, some humane support for writers. For God?s sake, since the Association of Nigerian Authors was inaugurated in 1981 in Nsukka, we?ve been talking about not just government support for the art but public support, national support. I?m not interested in a government coming to our conference every year and saying, "I donate one million Naira". Whose money is it? It is not his money, it is our money. I?m not interested in the president saying, "Because I have woken up from the right side of my bed today, you writers take five million". That is patronizing and insulting. I?m asking for a policy not a handout. Government and the public should recognize writers and put something in place that will make it possible for them to write and create in relative comfort. Most of the works I have written in the last ten years I have had to write them abroad. The inspiration is my country but the peace of mind is not here to put it into writing. Even the current works I?m doing now in poetry, drama and essays, were done during the short time I spent in the U.S., Holland and France.
Apart from the provision of a conducive atmosphere for writers by the government, writers also need to put their house in order. The relationship between the so-called older writers and the new writers should be more cordial. This is important because we need each other. The older writers need the new writers to fire them on, to put them on their toes. And young writers need older writers to give them direction and inspiration. It is some kind of creative disagreement I want between these two, not rancour. Not the kind of insult I see on the pages of some newspapers every time.