The oral tradition predates the literary. The Iliad and The Odyssey came to us, originally, in oral form as did The Canterbury Tales. Before Guttenberg there were griots, bards and troubadours. To what extent do you agree or differ from this view, especially seeing that you have just published a collection? One of the foremost performance poets in the country Sage Hasson has said that he doesn’t believe poetry was meant to be written down. I was also pretty much preoccupied with the stage at the time so that kept any publishing anxieties I had at bay for a while. Besides, I had my sights, in Nigeria, on two publishing outfits and I was willing to wait until the elements aligned. But few presses were publishing poetry and I wasn’t going to self-publish. I had been writing actively for about 17 years. I think it was primarily an issue of timing between having a ready manuscript and a publisher willing to take the risk. Why did it take this long for you to bring out a collection? Your first poetry collection, For Broken Men Who Cross Often, is coming some 15 years after you set out as a performance poet.
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