Interview//Chiwenite Onyekwelu // The Country & The Song
Interview With Chiwenite Onyekwelu: The Country & The Song
Greetings, Chiwenite!
It’s a true pleasure to have you as part of our second issue. Recently I read one of your poems, titled “fuck” published in Poetry UDUS, such a beautiful piece. Your poetry has long moved between the deeply personal and the powerfully political, so you felt like a natural voice for The Country and the Song a theme that seeks to echo the beauty, brokenness, and bravery of nations and the people within them. Thank you for joining us in this conversation.
Re:
Thank you very much. Writing is a solitary endeavor. So, it’s a great honor to find that my poetry is being read, and not just in the usual way, but with this amount of carefulness. I’m glad to be a part of this conversation.
1. To begin with, how are you truly, these days? And where in the world are you answering these questions from?
Ans:
I am alright, like most other Nigerians. Which is to say that I am withdrawing more and more into my private space.
I’m answering these questions from Anambra state.
2. When you hear the phrase The Country and the Song, what feelings or images rise for you? How does this theme resonate with your personal and creative life?
Ans:
On first thought, the phrase seems to me like a pointer towards music— a music peculiar to a country. This can bedynamic because the songs people engage in often change as the country does. So on one hand, I look at the phrase and want it to mean something soft and harmonious, something I can dance to. Like hip-hop or highlife or Afrobeat. On the other hand, I’m a poet (in Nigeria) so I sometimes overthink things like this, especially when considering associated feelings and images. “The Country and the Song”, therefore, gives me a feeling of lamentation. It’s like there is an entire country singing, but not out of joy. It's scary, this thought.
Regarding how the theme resonates with my personal and creative life, I believe that to an extent, to be a poet is to be fluent in music. We can choose to sing about our personal lives or about a collective suffering or amnesia, as Koleka Putuma called it. The theme resonates deeply with me because I have found myself writing poems that sing about this country. It’s like a web— having to live daily in it, and when I sit down to write, having to write about it.
3. Your poems often seem to carry both tenderness and urgency. Do you see poetry as a political act, especially when written from or about a country wrestling with its own contradictions?
Ans:
Yes, I do. Poetry is a political act. We live in a quagmire of a country so we are only able to write from it. Our environment shapes the themes and tones of our poetry. It does not matter whether we choose to write directly about the corruption in the government or the backhandedness of the police or about romance. The very act of writing is in itself political.
I see it like this: If I were to be in a different country, say the United States or Mauritius, my works would be different. Each experience, including my idea of love, my understanding of government, my idea of religion, and so on. The fact that I’m this exact poet is simply because I exist in this country at the moment. Therefore, everything I write is a political act, because I exist here and I am trying to tell the world what it’s like to be here.
4. Every poet carries a certain silence they’re trying to break. What silence did you grow up surrounded by, and how has writing helped you navigate or confront it?
Ans:
I was a very timid kid. Some persons, particularly women, took advantage of this. Most of my early poems are about these experiences or “silence”.
As someone who, before now, did not really associate with others, writing was a kind of catharsis. It’s like self-therapy. By writing about the experiences that bothered me, I was forced to spend more time thinking about them. Writing is curative, except in this case you can see the wounds as they heal.
5. In many of your works, hope feels like something fragile, even endangered, yet still alive. How has your relationship with hope or hopelessness — evolved over the years, especially as a Nigerian poet?
Ans:
As a Nigerian poet, hope for me has shifted from the external to the internal. I do not expect anything from Nigeria. I would love for things to get better, but I’m not hoping on that.
In his 1983 book The Trouble With Nigeria, Achebe wrote, “In Nigeria, people say ‘nothing works’ and mean it. It has become an article of faith.” This way of living puts pressure on you. It’s easier to believe that some external factor— say a government policy or good leadership” will at some point make your life better. But in the event that this isn’t foreseeable, you’re forced to channel all hope internally towards yourself.
I believe this mental evolution has occurred in all Nigerians, including poets. And this kind of hope is fragile; it’s endangered. It can be squashed by one bad decision made by anyone sitting on the national rock.
6. The idea of a "song" suggests rhythm, memory, and endurance. How does music, literal or metaphorical influence your poetry, especially when writing about struggle or survival?
Ans:
I must confess that I’m not a music person, in the literal sense of it. I don’t really listen to music, except on occasions where I’m moved to. However, the metaphorical idea of music is very important to me as a poet.
I see poetry as a way of singing. On one hand, this means thatif I’m writing about struggle or survival, I might tilt towards a fragile, somber tone.
Like David’s Psalms or Confessions by Saint Augustine. On the other hand, however, music influences my poetry in the sense that I want the work to come out smoothly, to sing. So, for instance, I find myself replacing “rock” with “stone”, “neck” with “throat”, or “mountain” with “hill”. You know, anything glossy on the edges, one that allows the poem to sing.
7. Looking back, was there a moment or poem that made you realize your writing could speak beyond the personal, that it could become part of a larger collective voice?
Ans:
Yes, there was. A few years ago I read Fatima Asghar’s debut collection, If They Come For Us. Told from a Pakistani-American perspective, the book explores the themes of identity, trauma, grief, and resilience. Reading the book was a life-changing experience for me. It made me realize how important our individual stories are, and how, when you really look at them, you’d find that each story is part of a larger collective voice.
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart was also essential in this regard. As a young writer who was just starting out then, both books taught me to be original, to tell my personal accountsand let my work naturally gravitate towards the collective voice where it fits into. The opposite would be doing what Momtaza Mehri described as “being too hungry for a story that isn’t yours”.
8. You’ve written poems that amplify the stories of people on the margins — the unheard, the nearly invisible. Why is it important for you to bring those voices to the page?
Ans:
It is important because poetry, before all other utilities, is first a medium of communication. With the Internet, I’ve seen how easily I can get my message out. So when I write a poem about a rigged election or the Owo church massacre or the woman I met dying from cancer at a teaching hospital, I’m not trying to entertain the reader. I’m saying: Look, my people are suffering.
That is the original intent. There are moments, I admit, where I pursue utilities other than this. However, I constantly remind myself to not derail. There are people—past or present—whose stories would not be heard unless we talk about them. We have the tools at our disposal.
In my most recent poems, I’m moving away from the first-person pronoun. I’m writing more about others: the aged Carpenter I saw in a catholic church, the patient with a heart disorder, the IDP camps in Borno and Zamfara state, etc.
9. In your journey as a writer, how has your idea of “home” or “country” shifted? Has poetry helped you redefine what belonging means?
Ans:
I wouldn’t say it has. I love this country very much, and while I struggle with real, undeniable anger, this place is still the only home I belong to. Writing hasn’t changed it, both in the physical and non-physical sense of the word.
10. Lastly, imagine your poems being read many years from now, in a different version of Nigeria, perhaps more whole, perhaps still healing. What do you hope your work will say about the people and the moment we’re living through today?
Ans:
I hope it tells them that the Nigerians of today were strong people. But being strong doesn’t matter unless you have a fighting chance.
Chiwenite Onyekwelu is a Nigerian poet and pharmacist. His works appear in Hudson Review, Cincinnati Review, Rattle, Adroit, and elsewhere. He won the 2024 After the End Poetry Prize organized at Oxford University, as well as the Prism International’s Pacific Spirit Poetry Contest. He has also been a finalist for the Evaristo Prize for African Poetry, the Bridport Prize, and the Alpine Fellowship Prize. Chiweniteholds a Bachelor of Pharmacy (B. Pharm) from NnamdiAzikiwe University, Nigeria.