Poets Resist: Jide Salawu + Contraband Bodies

An interview with poet Jide Salawu

ALL LIT UP: How would you describe Contraband Bodies to someone picking it up for the first time?

JIDE SALAWU: I might say it is a book about the feeling of outsideness, estrangement in the diaspora, including Canada, a fight for belonging, and a confession of an abusive relationship with the home country, and many other things. I can only wish the reader finds that instance of insight. I callContraband Bodies a record of personal memories, but I have not been able to keep that promise, because of the sorts of forces of Black flow in the world today. There are so many encounters for the reader; I can only hope there is a certain epiphany in the joy of reading. And I have received some comments on the work from great writers; I would defer to their reflections, as they were generous enough to provide their reviews of the book. New-generation African poetry is now a huge corpus, and Afro-Canadian poetry is now an extensive list; I count myself lucky to add to that expansive landscape of poetic imagination. Even as Harris reminds us in Dionne Brand’s The Blue Clerk that imagination is the unfinished genesis, it is boundless, and it is within that infinitude that I hope Contraband Bodies at least adds something to the currents.

ALU: Is there a line (in your own or someone else’s work) that you return to?

JIDE: “God, do not make me a beast / of burden for this land, and if you do, / I promise not to be a good donkey.” That sentence or sequence actually was inspired by Roger Reeves’s line in The Best Barbarian, which goes, “I was not a good dog in my former life.”

ALU: What role does community—readers, poets, teachers—play in your writing?

JIDE: For poetry to thrive, there must be a community to sustain it. I think this is not peculiar to the genre but all forms of art. So, the community plays a huge role in the existence of the form. Community is the ecosystem in terms of audience and readership. And when I say readership, I also mean all poets read other poets, and that is one way of thinking about community. This is just for the pure love of the art. Back in Nigeria, it is this unalloyed passion that is driving a new-generation of poets today, even with the limited resources—and this includes Hussain Ahmed, Adedayo Agarau, Rasaq Maliq Gbolahan, Obiageli Iloakasia, Rahma Jimoh, Theresa Lola, Damilola Omotoyinbo, and many others. But this spring is not in Nigeria alone; Africa is witnessing new talented poets, and we are seeing the wonderful work. There is a certain homeliness that the community offers you. Beyond attending different reading series and poetry book launches, I also see community as a form of everyday practice. This includes our work at Brown Bamboo where we celebrate African and new-generation Black poets who read their work and open their lines to conversation. Take my poet friend Anindita Mukherjee, for example. She is a loyal disciple of poetry, a confessor of its linguistic holiness. Anindita is there sharing different poems with me — striking works from Poetry Foundation, poets.org, and so many active venues today. I am indebted for such friendship of many people who have read my poems and told me about their weaknesses and strengths. Community is many things, and it is through the kindness of this network that I was able to publish Contraband Bodies. So thank you, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Joanna Streetly, Tolu Oloruntoba, Jumoke Verisimmo, Uchechukwu Umezurike, Emelda Gwitimah, and many others.

ALU: How do you sustain a practice of writing poetry in politically or personally challenging times?

JIDE: It is a very hopeless time, and a cloud of despair pervades the air. To write poetry in our world now is to express obduracy. We live in a highly surveilled world, and the new global order is as ruthless as ever before. Just a few months ago, the news of an American poet killed by the police was all over the TV.  It is an overwhelming tragedy all over the surroundings. There is war all over the place. But writing is about courage. To write in a challenging time with brutal honesty is a practice of hope. That makes you a good rebel, as a credit. I haven’t been warned yet. But I am sure you know that poets go to jail for their writings. I remember now, as a student of African literature, the first time I was introduced to the Malawian poet Jack Mapanje, my professor’s first remark was about his incarceration. Yes, I remember the title of the work now, The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prison. The exilic tradition of African writings too emerged from the political stress experienced by African writers. Indeed then, if you write to speak to power, you also must be ready for losses, which are often personal. I think to be seen as a threat because you speak out against oppression is rewarding; it means you are dedicated to humanity and hope! There isn’t much of that around these days.

Read “I Will Return to You, Marrakech“
from Contraband Bodies

I Will Return to You, Marrakech
—for Houcien

I.

The vibrant souks of the Medina
may sink into my skull like an old
knife. If I die, my soul will roam this
continent with pleasure, along its fine
shorelines, garden of cactuses, and
fumes of desert
rising above the Sahara where Imazighen
men feast on sand soup and camel meat.

II.

In America, my body is made of mint tea,
before the first caffeine devotion.
I have no more gambit stories about the
sea. Exile is a broken thread of salty
water joined in part by WhatsApp
stories
where my mother whispers tasa nu
and asks, what am I having for
dinner?

III.

I will return to you, Marrakech.
In my dream, I will land like a stalk of
rose in a neighbour’s hands, before
facing Jbilet to renew a vow of dust and
watch
common bulbuls settle on the green lids of Agdal
where the oud does not dissipate for thirty
centuries. I shall face Bahia with mosaic face;
I shall not forget the beauty of home.

Watch Jide read from Contraband Bodies

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Jide Salawu is the author of Preface for Leaving Homeland published under African Poetry Book Fund, and the co-editor of African Urban Echoes published by Griots Lounge Canada. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Fiddlehead, Walrus, Poetry Pause, Literary Review of Canada, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Transition, and so on.  He was a Yosef Wosk Fellow and the recipient of the James Patrick Folinsbee Award for Creative Writing at the University of Alberta. Salawu grew up in Shao, Nigeria, but currently lives in Edmonton, Canada, where he teaches as an assistant lecturer at the English and Film Studies program of the University of Alberta.

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Thanks to Jide for answering our questions, and to NeWest Press for the text of “I Will Return to You, Marrakech” from Contraband Bodies, which is available to order now (and get 15% off + FREE shipping Canada-wide with the code POETSRESIST until April 30!).

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