Gimba Kakanda is a poet and columnist presently working on his debut novel. Recently, he returned from an International Writing Program (IWP) at the University of Iowa, United States. Here, he talks about the residency, his work-in-progress and more.
Bookshelf: You recently returned from an International Writing Program (IWP) at the University of Iowa, United States. How long did you stay and how would you describe the experience?
Gimba Kakanda: It’s a three-month residency where one is expected to make use of his or her time as desired. You may even choose to sleep through the period, drinking wine and whatnot. In my first week, I almost mistook myself for a tourist. I would make a sudden retreat to my room, staying indoors most of the time. The programs we participated in were flexible, and so it was easy to opt out of any considered a distraction. The experience is unforgettable, meeting and learning from such a multi-cultural group, writers from 35 countries. But it’s also difficult in a sense to exist among such a group, learning to respect others’ cultural and social values and sensibilities. Even though our bonding was seen as impressive, which our house-keeper, Mary Nazareth, remarked as the best she had witnessed, there were certain ups and downs, instigated by social, personal, cultural and even political differences. In fact, in the wake of a certain problem, I teased that I may write a guidebook for future participants. Over all, I was happy with the friends I made, beautiful writers, some of us the Singaporean writer Audrey Chin joked were bound to obscurity. She was a teaser, anyway, always there to make us laugh.
Bookshelf: You are now an Iowa fellow. How has the program impacted on your writing?
Kakanda: Yes, the residency comes with such honour, and aside from widening my literary network, it has opened a door to opportunities in the arts. The participants are rising or established writers from their country, and what that means is our work receives attention in those countries, especially where the participants are also scholars. So far, there are calls to contribute to poetry anthologies from Macedonia and Pakistan from participants from those places. Artistically, being caged in a space in which you are expected to focus on your literary work and worldview, away from your friends and family and regular life, inspires a deeper connection to arts and that’s what the program has done to me, a deeper connection to literature.
Bookshelf: You have a poetry collection to your name, titled ‘Safari Pants’, however, you have been working on a novel for several years now. What were you able to achieve in that direction during your residency?
Kakanda: During my calendar clinic with a staff of the program, Natasa Durovicova, in the first week of the program, in which I was introduced to the events I would or should take part in, I told her of my main aim of being in Iowa: to write. I think that played in my favour, I had enough time to think and write uninterrupted. I missed some events as a result of that, but it was an amazingly productive stay. I went to Iowa with a mission to finish my novel, a first draft of which was finished five years ago. I ended up erasing several chapters, adding about 52, 000 words. I have about two or more chapters to finish working on the book because of a realization that I may have to finish a book by a writer portrayed in the book. I also wrote 61 poems during my stay, some of which I may have to find time to polish.
Bookshelf: What will you say influenced the themes you explored in the poems you wrote during the program, including those you read out loud to fellow residents?
Kakanda: The first poem I wrote in the United States was titled ‘I am not your plural.’ It was written on my arrival, inspired by a neon sign at the baggage reclaim section of O’Hare International Airport, Chicago, warning travellers about a recent outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. I was astounded by the existence of such a notice on August 18, 2017, misinforming travellers about a plague the people of those affected countries fought really hard to stop, a plague that wasn’t even ‘recent’ as portrayed. It offended me that ‘West Africa,’ a region of 18 countries, was used, when the disease affected only five countries. Ebola was recorded in the United States too, but then there was no warning in that regard, at least to point to the exact place that the virus occurred, at any airport in any country in Africa. So I worked and reworked the poem until I missed my connecting flight to Cedar Rapids. But United Airlines was considerate, and professional. I got to leave the airport three hours later. Strangely, a white passenger at the waiting lounge approached to see what I was reading and we struck a conversation around race, around Charlottesville, and he told me about certain inadequacies in checking white supremacists going loose since the election of President Trump. He was the first person to read the poem. It turned out he’s an unpublished poet, and an artist from Portland, Maine. I read some of his poems too. He gave me his diary and told me deeply personal stories about himself, his struggle and all. His name is Rick Beerhorst.
Bookshelf: Residences come with encounters, sometimes more deliberate than your meeting with Beerhorst. Who are those writers you met that made your stay worthwhile and what was the height of those specific encounters?
Kakanda: You know, like any such gathering, there were cliques but none was closed or hostile to the other. Some of the cliques were based on similarity in first or a major language, culture, habit or interests. Writers are human. We gossip, have fun and break laws. There were the middle-eastern sisters, a clique comprising writers from the Middle East, bound by their love of Arabic, which was the lingua franca of their group. I never got to tell them I understand bits of Arabic, and knew some of the things they discussed.
Bookshelf: The program was an avenue for discussions on a variety of subjects. Kindly share some of those…
Kakanda: My first engagement was what they called World Literature Today, in which participants were expected to introduce students of the University of Iowa to the history, literary and political, of their place. In mine, I introduced the students to the history of writing and literacy in Kanem Empire, hundreds of years before the British colonial education, down through the colonial overthrow of Sultan Attahiru I, to what I termed ‘dual literacy’ in Northern Nigeria today, citing ajami and things related. It was necessary to show them why northern Nigeria is stuck in this duality of literacy, some still preferring Islamic education to the western. I talked about translation as facilitated by colonial administrators, producing writers like Abubakar Imam who translated canonized works of English writers. Another memorable experience is my debate, during a panel, on whether Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ was actually a criticism of colonialism as some offered, with which I disagreed, that Conrad was in fact racist and that the book was a disdainful portrayal of those Congolese and that it perpetuated dehumanizing stereotypes of black Africans.
Bookshelf: Going back to your writing, what’s the novel you are working on about?
Kakanda: The current provisional title of the book is ‘This Night Around Us’. It used to be ‘The Book of Night’, following a schizophrenic character’s experiences of tragic happenings around him, observing a series of topical and historical events from the sectarian rivalries and ethno-religious crises in Northern Nigerian to the challenge of growing up under a patriarchal father who appears ashamed of the boy’s condition, and dealing with confusing his hallucinations and paranoia with his everyday reality. I chose a mentally ill or unreliable narrator because of the sensitivity to some of the issues covered, perhaps, that may offer me a window out of any misunderstanding when it’s published.
Bookshelf: How do you approach writing, generally, whether poetry or prose?
Kakanda: I approach the two genres differently. Prose I find the convenience to write when I have an idea of what to work on, with the plot and climax mentally planned, though that may change as I progress. Whenever I’m working on prose, there’s no tone of finality in my first draft, I think of a critical friend, an editor, a possible correspondence to rework the draft based on suggestions and disagreements. Poetry, however, requires less editorial interference because attempts at such may result in producing another poem. It’s always tricky to have others edit your poems beyond the grammar.
Bookshelf: When and how did you start writing?
Kakanda: I grew up in my father’s study. He was a school teacher, and that meant access to books, some of them beyond my comprehension when I chanced upon them. I began to write in imitation of what I discovered in those books, and over the years I found doing so therapeutic. They made me feel alive. I started writing poetry before I knew exactly what it is. I just broke my prose into witty lines as seen in the poetry books I read, with no technical knowledge of the rules.
Bookshelf: When you are not writing, what are you usually found doing?
Kakanda: If I’m not writing or thinking about writing, I’m definitely reading, hanging out or chatting with my friends, sleeping or driving. About driving, I’ve grown into considering it a way to relax. I love embarking on a short trip to nowhere, playing loud music, alone. It’s relaxing, being away from stationary madness and going on a ride with yourself, your thoughts, and perhaps the demons inside you.
Bookshelf: If you are to take only five books on a trip, what titles would you choose?
Kakanda: This is tough because I choose books to read based on my mood. My first attraction to a book is the language, an unusual use of it to tell a story. It’s not enough to have a story, our grandmas all have stories, but how it’s told defines the writer. In my current mood, I may go with Teju Cole’s ‘Open City,’ J. M. Coetzee’s ‘Disgrace,’ Gabriel Marquez Garcia’s ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude,’ Zadie Smith’s ‘White Teeth,’ and any non-fiction by my man David Remnick, one of the greatest living users of the English language.
