Rex
Omonla is a Nigeria born Poet, Essayist and short story writer based in Lagos
and high places as the moon, sun and Uranus.
A blogger. Computer coach. Singer,
songwriter. Volleyball and Basketball analyst and a footballer with incredible
speed and pace. A Haiku coach and an idealist. Under the name ‘
Obaji-Nwali Segun he made the 2017 Babishaiku
finalist and was longlisted for the annulled 2016 Etisalat flash fiction
contest with the story titled ‘Recovering my heart from pleats’. In 2017 his
Queer short story ‘Woman is a Beautiful Thing’ was shortlisted for the Quramo Writers’ Prize Adult
Category but was withdrawn from the contest a day to the
award-giving ceremony for an unknown reason. Under the name Celestine
Chimumunefenwaunaya, his poems and short stories have been published in Tuck Magazine. Under
the name Obaji Godwin, his poems and a short story titled ‘How I Decayed, have
appeared in Kalahari Review.
Q: What was the process of writing your particular poem LIKE TORN
KITES IN A HURRICANE?
A: The birthing of LIKE TORN KITES IN A HURICANE
was through cesarean operation. It’s a pithy poem that reeled my irises to crimson
fluids. Unlike the multitude of poems I’ve been able to write, it parted the
nub of hellhole and wedged me in sharp-tipped prickles. Its formation would have
been smooth and unrelieved but the fist of things were twisted to barbed wire
on the ground that when I decided on writing the poem I’ve got a
larger-than-life dream. The dream that had made me to nomenclate my own self a
crass, inconsequential and unbelievable hog. When I picked my pen for this elfin
but longwinded poem, the aspiration I carried in the lid of my heart was to
dump a poetic oeuvre overtly cranky, unusual, lyrical and phenomenal. I was up
for a poem that would prevaricate existing cultures and designs. I mean the
poetic wisp that’s gonna be a cupid in the valley of egrets. I
needed a poetic arrangement sharp enough to carve for itself a singular niche that’s
gonna be mimicked and scuttled after all over Africa (lol!). Drafting it was a
burden because all I would be unraveling in the verses was oozing from a
real-life experience happening under my very nose. The process was
soul-slurping because I was getting inspired by the emaciated body of an octogenarian
who abruptly lost his wife in a ghastly car accident at the half of his age and
continued to mourn, to count backwards, inwards and upwards repudiating fresh affection
and novel camaraderie. For the first time I wasn’t going to write a poem because
in my rucksack of words nestled a glut of highfalutin and excessively aesthetic
vocabularies. I would be writing because my eyes were cherry rivulets, my heart
a bustling grenade.
LIKE
TORN KITES IN A HURRICANE failed to fall merely; on the reason that at the time
of its composition I was a poet torn between two pyramidal dreams: molding a
masterpiece with an approach so novel and all alone, then capturing the
life-situation of love, romance, death and grave in the way that kept me singing,
crying, grunting, raising and falling. In the way my reader would be panting
and juddering like the blubber of a running pregnant pooch. I needed a poem
that would vibrate the mind as it winds on. I needed a poem that would feed my readers thunders and
earthquakes. I needed a poem that would broach boundaries and part the eyes to
medetarean sea.
The
dream of etching lines that broke out of traditions didn’t just hop in and latch unto the wall of my spirit. I
was only tired of following suite. I was loathing gravely that a large number of
African poets are wannabes, suddenly switching into and writing in the manner of the poets winning awards in
the continent. The thick kaleidoscopicsm was for me, irking and disgusting. I was
tired of dumping my voice because a particular poetic voice is trending and it’s a universal vogue.
And I was tired of writing poems that
ended up sounding flat and passionless_
Sorry
for my twirling, your question put hoe in an inflated balloon.
For
instance, when Romeo Oriogun appeared in Praxis Magazine with Burnt men, showed
in Brittle paper and won the Brunel Prize I fancied the craft of the LGBTQ
advocant. I really fell in love with his fiddly and tricky metaphors. The
metaphors cracking laws and orders. The metaphor sharper than the teeth of the
leviathan. These metaphors that barely cared if the reader grunts or frowns. The
metaphor that lingers after it was gone through. I fancied him. But his writing
was magnifying queer bodies, bodies lost
in labyrinth of paths. Then check it out, I, who wasn’t queer began to glorify queer bodies. Something I wasn’t.
I hadn’t tasted. Something I barely fancied all because I thought coupled with his singular style he’s trending because he’s writing on queer subject. What was the corollary of my arts?
standing on the cranky plinth that wasn’t mine ,what form of poems was I busy spilling? I was only
penning down lies, lopsided and boring poems. Because I wasn’t sincere. Because
I was rallying after someone’s voice and never bothered to cogitate over the expediency
of detecting my own voice in the spectrum of poetry. Standing on someone else
voice got me writing a short story on
lesbianism which made, but got withdrawn from the mega Nigerian 2017 Quramo
Writer’s Prize shortlist because……sorry, your time……I won’t be talking about
this now.
I
got out of everyone, the trill of awards and wrote LIKE TORN KITES IN A HURRICANE
and many other poems in the way I can relate to and defend if eventually I was
called upon, in the way that unraveled my innermost feelings.
So,
summarily, the process of writing LIKE TORN KITES IN A HURRICANE was
compartmentalizing, onerous and different because quoting Gbenga Adesina there
is a need for a flux in African Poetry and its literature.
Q: What does poetry mean to you?
A: For me,
poetry is a longwinded voyage of sugary vistas. I fancy that it unfurls me and
fills me to the brim with infinite exhilarations. For the fact it clefts for me
a space in the spectrum where am always able to round too many things in a
jiffy, emotionally, kaleidoscopically and constructively poetry for me, is a
feathery paradise. A bulldozing arsenal of
war. Poetry is a treasured island I wind into when I get hunted by the vicissitudes
and abnormalities of life. It’s my cross and my crown. It puts tears in my eyes
and it feed me with laughter. It annoys me and consoles me. It is the assizes with
which I dissect the world roaming like a tramp and spread my
inward thoughts of corrections, reformations, enlightenment and reconciliation.
Lastly, poetry for me, is a war zone attended only by mean made men.
Q:
What are your five year goals with your
poetry?
A:
Although, I’ve been repeatedly published in online magazines as Tuck and
Kalahari Review but appearing in the long and short list of this esteemed
contest revered all over Africa stuck me in succulent cantata, milky sonata and
boasted my peripatetic ego (lol!) and now am feeling its possible I’d have become
a renowned writer of expository and soporific poetry chapbooks and collections
in the next five years. I hoped strongly that in the next five years I’d would
have pleated a pattern of poetry particular to Rex Omonla. Am a strong mind and
a very difficult tongue so I believe. Lastly, in the next five years I would
have been lost in the wind, touring the whole of Africa like Gbenga Adesina, Safia
Elhilo, Kwesi Brew and others lecturing the growing Africa poets the way to read and appreciate Africa poetry and the expediency
of experimentation in the continent’s poetry.
Sorry, this final lastly, in the next five years I would have caligraphed in
the Orions poems that are feudal, boundary-broaching and tradition-defiling.
Q: Which African Poets are you keen
on reading?
A:
I fancy poets who write because they’ve got things to say and when they write they spill fire and break codes and tenets; poets who devour landmarks and milestones and slur the rule of grammar because they
know we’ve got poetic license and still deserve in the range of trophies golden
alchemy. They poets am referring and which I’ve always be caught reading are in
no particular order: Gbenga Adesina, Romeo Oriogun, Warsan Shire, Nayyirah
Waheed, Safia Elhilo, Kwesi Brew, Ben Okiri, Syl Cheney-Coker, Wole Soyinka and
any poem published by Brittle Paper (lol!)
Q: What some of the challenges you
face with poetry?
A:
The route into its body is jagged and always bedazzling. A lively poem must be
simple yet carry in its foyer labyrinth of paths. But things started getting smooth when I started taking
stock of things and realized I’d only have to read as many first-rate poems as
possible and dump the I idea of trying
to write and sound like a particular poet.
Q:
Words for literature teachers
A:
Poetry teachers must understand that indisputably poetry is a bar of prickles but
despite its unsettling jaggedness it’s like any other vocation that could be learnt and mastered. I expect them to whisper this
into the head of their students. They should feed their audience with the fact that there isn’t any magical way one can be
a poet writing great poems if not by reading and just reading poems by poets
who sucked their mothers breasts well. They should teach the students never to hop across a poem because of its boringness
and rigidity, the more they read it the fog will part for the king. Lastly,
poetry teachers should curtail the rate at which we feed our young folks poetry
that ended with a particular era. It’s not as if it shouldn’t be taught at all.
I once became angry that all the time my mentor would be talking about poems
glorifying colonialism and long-fought wars again and again as if the world is
moving backward. One day I told him teach me poems that talk about the problems
of today, the feeling of the moment, the trending things. I know the white men came and exploit and push us into slavery, am
tired of the old sagas. Teach them how poetry can change their lives, how it
can put meal on their tables and how it can nurture them into positive monsters.
When you teach them, let your eyes be particles of passion.
Q:
Parting remark?
A:
I’m m happy the Babishainiwe Poetry
Foundation had broken the hedge and created a wide window into my multihued world.
To the judges I say large kudos for having more than two eyes. To the poets who
submitted and didn’t make the longlist,
to the poets dropped to make things smaller hear this; from the inception of Babishainiwe Poetry contest, except when it
was meant for Ugandan Women alone, I’ve been submitting poems for the prize but
I’ve never smelled the longlist. But I never gave up…..guys I say to you guys
don’t give up. Am talking to you, you will get there. Just read more and write
more.
****************
The shortlisted poems may be read here:
