Nengi Josef Ilagha, popularly known as Pope Pen The First, President of the Pen Pushers Talking Front, PPTF, has worked as a journalist, broadcaster and public relations consultant. Born in Nembe, Bayelsa State, on December 18, 1963, he took a degree in English & Literary Studies from the University of Port Harcourt. A one-time editor of The Tide On Sunday Nengi Josef Ilagha was Speech Writer to the Governor of Bayelsa State. He was later elevated to Special Adviser on Research & Documentation to the same government on account of his robust intellectual input to the resource control debate. His latest book, Goodluck To Bayelsa, a collection of speeches in honour of Dr Goodluck Jonathan, has been highly commended for putting the political records straight in Bayelsa and for speaking up eloquently for peace in the Niger Delta region. January Gestures, his new book of poems, was among the nine books in the race for the 2009 edition of the Nigeria Prize for Literature, sponsored by NLNG. In this revealing interview just before the event, the poet bares his mind.

What does it feel like to be shortlisted for the 2009 Nigeria Prize for Literature?

I am suitably gratified to have made it through to this point. Without doubt, Nigeria is blessed with a good number of poets, and the evidence was there for the panel of judges to see. To be in the first nine out of 163 poets, therefore, is indeed a remarkable feat. I am grateful that professional judgement has been given fairly, and that I have not fallen foul of the rules of poetic engagement so far. My entry for the competition, January Gestures, begins with a word of faith to the effect that I feel obliged to God for the life I live, and that I would dedicate my breath to praising the almightiness of my Maker, from day to day, for as long as I live. To be named in the shortlist, therefore, is like receiving a word of endorsement from above that my fervent prayers are being answered.

 Do you have previous commendations and awards?

Yes, indeed. Mantids, my first book of poems, won the Association of Nigerian Authors poetry prize in 1995, in manuscript. That was my opening glee, so to speak. That was the first time I received public confirmation that I was on the path of my true calling, and the assurance that I had not been wasting time scratching my feelings out on paper. After that, I took bolder steps towards poetry, and poetry practically took greater strides towards me. In 1998, I entered a collection of 54 fresh poems under the title, Apples & Serpents, and received honourable mention in the first edition of the Christopher Okigbo Prize for African Literature, endowed by Wole Soyinka. And then I went on a long sabbatical, writing speeches in the corridors of Creek Haven, and on the fringes of government.

 How many of your poetry collections have been published? Name them.

So far, I have four collections of poetry in print. After Mantids, I went back to work on Apples & Serpents, to explore the subject to the fullest possible limits, before publishing it. Today, it’s a much more sizeable book than it was in 1998, something far more satisfactory, and I’m proud to present it to the world the way it is. But I knew that I hadn’t quite exhausted myself. As a matter of fact, I was just taking the first tentative steps, like a chicken caught in the passage, on one leg standing, contemplating the long odyssey into the labyrinth of poetry. With the dawn of 2007, I embarked upon a more ambitious project, determined to write a book of poems dedicated to each month of the year, a rigorous labour of love undertaken from day to day, week after week, from January to December, stretching out like an interminable diary of pain. That’s how I began A Calendar of Faith, which is the composite title for the entire project. January Gestures is in print, and so is February Fabrics. The other ten months, March to December, are pending. That is to say, I have finished writing all twelve books of poetry, but I am awaiting funds from the IMF and the World Bank to have them published.

 In your opinion, what are the attributes of a good poem?

In the first place, a good poem should be able to communicate the feelings embodied in it. A poem is a poem because it seeks to express the feelings of the poet, its primary composer. It seeks to convey a message, to pass on a felt experience in a special way. That special way by which the message is conveyed is your style. It is your individuality. It cannot be taken from you. Content is everyone’s free party. It is how you say what everyone else can feel or say that marks you out from the crowd. The primary tool for doing that is imagery. Every good poem works with imagery, which is an all-embracing word for figures of speech.

For me, a poem is dry and arid if it does not leave me with an image that impresses itself on my mind sufficiently for me to want to go back to see exactly how the poet put it. In other words, an image must insist on being reckoned with. Every good poem deserves a second reading, and yet another, until the experience becomes a part of me. If I think of J.P. Clark’s “Ibadan,” for instance, the overriding image that I’m left with is “broken china in the sun.” Every other word in that poem builds up teasingly to that image. A truly gifted poet can harness a series of images in a single poem, line after line, without bungling his metaphors and without losing the admiration of the reader. I appreciate such poets.

When did you start writing poems?

I have always been fascinated by words for as long as I can remember. My venerable father, King Joseph Aye Ilagha, was widely recognised as the grammarian of the entire Nembe clan for several generations. He was fond of words, explosive in his use of words, and I was always ready to listen to him speak. As his first son, he took me everywhere he went, so I became his permanent audience. He also had a wonderful and majestic handwriting, and I wanted to be like him, so I started writing. But I consciously began crafting verse in form five, my last year at Nembe National Grammar School. That was in 1980. I was fascinated, in particular, by Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It overwhelmed my senses with mental pictures whenever I flipped through the pages, and I had a great teacher at that time, a youth corps member named Hassan Hassan, who dramatized it all for me in class. So, before long, I set out to recreate my own experiences on paper, attempting to sound like Shakespeare. I failed woefully, of course, but I’m glad to say that I didn’t give up. Thankfully, my love for words endures till this day, and this is just how far the excursion with my father has taken me.

Do you write any other genre apart from poetry?

Yes, I tried working with every genre that was introduced to me in class. I sketched some dialogue in the name of writing plays. I began a novel or two to test my capacity for endurance, and didn’t get far enough. Now, I’m much more at home with the short fiction medium because I have to deal with just a slice of life at a time. A Birthday Delight, my first collection of short stories, is already in print, and so is I Want To Be A Senator, my first collection of essays gathered from my years in journalism. I find the essay useful as an art form because, like the short story, it captures my opinion and gives it amplitude within a short spell of time, so to speak. But my favourite medium for self expression is the poem. It enables me to condense so much into a few words, if I want to. I just roll from image to image, and do well to keep my roller-coaster ride under control. I am the driver in every one of my poems. I am always at the steering wheel, conscious of the fact that if I don’t control my words, I stand the risk of crashing out of relevance, and I can’t afford to do that. So, I grab the first word and let it lead me to the very last word.

 Can you mention five foreign poets that you love to read? What makes them peculiar?

Frankly, I have never been comfortable with questions like this. I wish you would take one particular poet, one particular work, and ask my opinion. Then I would be more definite. I studied Literature in English at the University of Port Harcourt in the first half of the 80s, which is to say that I was obliged to read widely, and intensively too. And, in the course of that, I came across a whole lot of enchanting poets. To pick five of them is to be unfair to the lot who have had a composite influence on the body of world literature, through the ages and through time. I was engrossed with the narrative verse of Geoffrey Chaucer as with the sonnets of William Shakespeare. I identify with the lyrics of Lord George Gordon Byron as with the poems of Alexander Pushkin or Rabindranath Tagore or Jean-Joseph Rabiarivelo. I can locate common grounds in the poetry of Pablo Neruda or T.S. Eliot or Edgar Allan Poe in much the same way that I am at home with the poetry of Dennis Brutus or Augustino Neto. In all, I am grateful for every quirk of composition that I learnt from these poets, and I believe I have already counted beyond five.

 Well, can you mention five Nigerian poets that you love to read?

Yes, I can. In 1986, I moulded my opinion on the poetry of Gabriel Okara into what turned out to be my undergraduate project, drawing a linguistic continuum between his poetry, as embodied in The Fisherman’s Invocation and the quaint prose of his only novel, The Voice. I have come to the conclusion that it is not enough to say, for instance, that I like Okigbo’s poetry and leave it at that. Indeed I love to read Christopher Okigbo for his delicate imagery, his winning lines, so much so that I am currently undertaking a written appreciation of his poetry in a long essay entitled “Tiger Mask & Nude Spear.” Such an exhaustive study, self-imposed as it is and conducted outside of the ivory tower, would enable me to understand why I like Okigbo’s poetry. I have to get to the root of the matter. Frankly, I should do that for every poet I enjoy reading.

The poetry of Odia Ofeimun equally opened my soul to another kind of poetic temperament, namely the poet as a social warrior out to question every infelicity in governance, and I speak with particular reference to The Poet Lied. And then, of course, there is Niyi Osundare, the most prolific Nigerian poet to date, and the most daring in terms of sheer stylistic impetus. He parades a variegated sensibility that many of his admirers wish they could inherit. What’s more, among my contemporaries, I admire the poetic talents of Esiaba Irobi, Afam Akeh, Chiedu Ezeanah, Ogaga Ifowodo and Chijioke Amu-Nnadi. These are poets who deserve to be studied in their own rights, poets with a high-grade sensitivity of their own. I believe it is high time we began an exhaustive critical appreciation of these poets for the sake of our national literature, and I have resolved to do my part of this large assignment. If there are no critics of current Nigerian literature, as Professor Charles Nnolim maintains, perhaps it will not be out of place for the writers themselves to become their own critics so long as it serves the end of literature.

 Can you please outline your daily activities…?

I’m afraid I can’t do that. I will not do that. No one day is the same as the other, and that’s what I have tried to explore in A Calendar of Faith. Every day is a genuine gift from God. Between sleep and waking, so much happens that isn’t the same, from day to day, week after week, month after month.

It is my duty to take the lessons of each day in my stride, to consciously make the most of that gift, if I am to qualify as a better human being tomorrow, one aspiring to be worthy of redemption in the eyes of God. In short, I don’t see life as routine. If it were so, it would be boring. There is always something unique about each day, and I always look out for that unique element, and do well to date it. For instance, if you were to give me this same assignment tomorrow, expecting me to outline my activities, I’m not likely to use these same words. So, I take every day as it comes, and do well to be in charge of it. The poem I write on the first day of the year cannot possibly be the same as the poem I write in the middle of the year or on the last day of the year, because each day comes with its own challenges, its own blessings, its own promises, its own disappointments, its own sheer variety.

Q.X.    Is the ability to write poetry innate in every human being?

I believe it is. We all have access to breath. Poetry is breath, free utterance captured on paper. You are at liberty to express yourself, or else to deny yourself self-expression by hiding the plain images, the unadorned words that come to you, under an obscurantist bushel. If you feel pain, do well to express it in your own words, in clear terms appreciable to your neighbour. If you fall in love, nobody expresses it for you. It is up to you to dig deep into yourself to shore up the best possible choice of words that can tell the listening ear that you are in love. Isn’t it?

In short, you can be a poet if you want to. All you need do is summon the required presence of mind, pull up a chair, sit your butt down before a desk, place a blank sheet of paper before you, hold a pen, and write out the next poem that comes to your mind to the best of your ability. The duty of a writer is to write. I believe that’s what you call discipline. If you can take that position when you set out to write a letter, you can do the same for a poem. Or, this being the age of the computer, type out your feelings on your laptop. To a large extent, a poem is a letter you write to yourself, a personal experience you share with yourself, and if someone gets to read it and is affected by it, you have scored a bull’s eye.

I suppose that’s what William Wordsworth meant when he defined poetry as an act of self confession, confessing yourself to yourself. In much the same way, I believe that’s what Niyi Osundare meant when he defined a poem as “man meaning to man.” So long as you employ the tools of poetry, the figurative use of language to express your feelings, you can persuade the reader to relate with that experience from your own point of view. To varying degrees, therefore, every human being is a poet. As Vincent Egbuson would put it, “a poet is a man.” By extension, for that matter, a poet may jolly well be a woman.

Q.XI.   If you were to win the coveted NLNG poetry prize for 2009, what would you invest in?

I doubt if I would have problems with investing the prize money wisely. I have seen enough of this wicked world to know that there is an open market out there, waiting for the best ideas to transform lives. There is a whole range of hungry commitments just waiting for funds to meet them. Beyond the immediate celebration, however, I am consumed by the idea of setting up a credible private media outfit that would help to streamline the thinking of the militants in the Niger Delta for the best. As Obasanjo would say, the problem with Nigeria is the problem of the Niger Delta. Yet, after serving three terms as the number one citizen of Nigeria, first as military Head of State, and twice as civilian President within a twenty-year period, he failed to resolve the problem. If you were to ask Obasanjo afresh what the problem with Nigeria is today, he would probably say the same thing. Blame it on the Niger Delta.

In my humble opinion, as a creative writer and as an illustrious son of the Niger Delta, the militants in question have not been able to express themselves fully, in intellectual terms, to the understanding of their neighbours in other parts of the country. And I say this advisedly. They are yet to compel the attention of the world with graphic descriptions of conditions in the swamp. They are yet to evoke the sympathy of the men and women of good conscience with the kind of rousing rhetoric typical of an Obama. Ultimately, I don’t think the option of the gun and the bayonet is the best. It only depletes our ranks. It only ends up wasting our useable manpower. It was an option that Isaac Boro himself had already jettisoned, as anyone familiar with his book, The 12-Day Revolution, will attest to. If Boro were alive today, he would be a man of peace, not a man of war. To resort to violence in this day and age is to suffer from what Wole Soyinka calls “idiom closure,” the inability to develop an argument beyond the moment. I dare say that dialogue answers all things. A well-reasoned response is the best answer to a foolish question. Put simply, peace is the answer to all the problems of Nigeria. Ask Jesus Christ.

In short, the pen is mightier than the gun. So, I would like to invest in the pen. I would rather start a writing school, so that every militant in the Niger Delta will be sufficiently equipped to express themselves. I would reach out to every militant worth his name, and give each one of them ample space to explain why they felt compelled to carry a gun and to cover their faces like Mau Mau photographers until President Umar Yar’Adua persuaded them to lay down their weapons, and Governor Timipre Sylva brought them out into the open, on national television. On my honour, I would do well to let them know from the start how forbidden it is to shed blood in the open sight of God. These are the concerns of my forthcoming book entitled, The Militant Writes Back, a body of poems expressing what it feels like to live in a militant environment such as the Niger Delta. Take note. I am a militant in my own right, but nobody is negotiating with me. And that is because the pen is my weapon.

Q.XII.             When you say you want to establish a private press that would put the Niger Delta struggle in better perspective, what do you mean? And what’s this talk of a writing school? Could you please explain further?

Sure. What I mean is this. I have worked as a journalist for the better part of my adult life. I have been a reporter in the best sense of the word, a foot-soldier in the news gathering business. I also served as editor of a state newspaper for four years, and I am a tried and tested broadcaster, on radio and television. It doesn’t quite matter that, today, I am banned from practicing journalism in my own state. I am banned from the state radio, banned from the state television, banned from revamping the state newspaper, even in my capacity as General Manager. And all this because I told the incumbent head of the media machinery in the state, the Commissioner for Information, no less, that he was the wrong man for the job, because he doesn’t know what it means to harness all three arms of the media to work in the larger interest of the state and of the Sylva government. I told him at point-blank range that nobody knows Asara A. Asara in the Nigerian media industry, even if he parades three As in his name, and that he would be better off as a manager of his hotel business or simply remain a professional fisherman. Rather than reason with me in a mature and civilized manner, the man took offence and opted to send my pen on suspension. But, as Esiaba Irobi would ask, how do you pin down a cloud?

But all that is just by the way. In December 2006, I made a public presentation of my first four books all at once to mark my 43rd birthday, and the Bayelsa State Government (under Dr Goodluck Jonathan at that time) made a heart-warming promise to provide me with a digital press on account of the commendable feat I had accomplished, so that I would be even more productive. The four books in question are Mantids, A Birthday Delight, I Want To Be A Senator, and Apples & Serpents. As may be expected, I was overjoyed at that public pronouncement. It’s a good sign when a prophet is accepted in his own backyard. But three years after that event, the promise is yet to be redeemed. So, in the light of all this, I would like to set up a press that would serve the public interest, a medium that would specifically help to correct the erroneous impressions held by some people about the Niger Delta, if I have the wherewithal so to do. That is because, to quote Obasanjo again, if the problem of the Niger Delta region is resolved, then the problem of Nigeria is as good as solved.

Now, to the last part of your question. Once upon a time, I conceived the idea of establishing a writing school with the modest funds at my disposal. It is called Shalom School of Scripture, SSS. It advocates peace as its motto. I actually bought a small parcel of land in Yenagoa, laid the foundation stone on December 2, 2004, with a few close friends as witness, and built it up to a certain point. It is still awaiting completion. That is a project idea that I consider worthwhile, and I don’t mind going back to it, if I have funds. As you know, there is no formal school of writing in Nigeria. Mamman Vatsa’s dream is yet to materialize, in Abuja or outside Abuja. This private initiative would admit Nigerian writers into a residency programme for as long as they see fit, in the heart of the Niger Delta, in Bayelsa precisely, so that our creative writers can be better enlightened about the motives that led the ex-militants to become militants in the first place.

Take it from me. Bayelsa is a nice, quiet and peaceful land where any writer in the world can concentrate his talents and write twelve books in one year, just as I have done. Bayelsa is the glory of all lands. There is no disputing that. If Jesus Christ is to come suddenly upon the world, he would arise from Bayelsa, and step out like a tell-tale thief in the deep night of the world’s ignorance, like a weaverbird spelling judgment upon the sins of the world with the very breath of poetry. I hope that answers your question.