Portia Opare: Hi Martin, thank you for agreeing to be part of this. I’ve been working with 20.35 Africa for a year now and our focus is on contemporary poetry, I think when it comes to contemporaneity, it becomes quite difficult to discuss what it is about, what people are writing, and what it means. You know, to get a sense out of it because it is constantly evolving. The whole purpose of our interviews and our conversations series is to try to get a real sense of this thing that we are interested in, what are young poets writing, what informs their thoughts and creative processes; get to know the poets intimately.
My first question is directed at your interest in nudity and how it plays out in your books. I’d love to know if there is a purpose to it being featured in your work.
Martin Egblewogbe: Thank you for having me. Yes, there is a purpose to it. For example, in the Gonjon Pin, it was used to illustrate humour, I wanted something that was just funny. I think that in a sense it is very easy to make fun of nakedness in context. In The Cwrolling Caterpillar, on the other hand, the person is naked for two reasons. Firstly, he has to be depicted as totally helpless in the sense that he doesn’t have even the most basic condiment, if I may put it that way, of contemporary existence. You know when you see someone who is not clothed, it doesn’t mean that the person can’t survive generally but a person who is performing all their activities not clothed is not fully there. So, by making that individual naked they are more or less elemental with all the other things that are there – the water, the rocks, everything.
Portia Opare: I came across a copy of an anthology titled A Selection of African poetry. It is an old classic, edited by Kojo Senanu & Theo Vincent and first published in 1976. The book features two poems by a certain Yao Egblewogbe. Is there a relationship?
Martin Egblewogbe: Yes, he is my late father.
Portia Opare: Wow, you have a deep connection to poetry. I think this question leads us to you telling us about yourself, and your development as a writer. Is it important to have a writer in the family for one’s craft to grow as a writer?
Martin Egblewogbe: Well, I don’t think it must be a family member because anybody can start from somewhere but I believe that the environment counts.
Growing up we had an environment in which we were immersed in books, so it was natural to try and replicate some of what we were reading. Secondly, we grew up on campus, at the University of Ghana where children not only had access to books but also sufficient time to read and write down their experiences. This was assisted by the fact that the school we attended had very good English teachers who always insisted we write essays about the vacations we had during the school break; narrating how we spent the vacation, etc. Added to that, and I think this must have had a bigger influence, my father was a lot into folklore and he always told us stories, really magical and fascinating stories and that built our storytelling abilities; the idea of being able to tell stories as entertainment was deeply ingrained in us. I think even though I started writing very early, the knowledge that the writing was to serve the purpose of telling stories was immediate, it wasn’t just to record occurrences but to tell stories, and the more entertaining the story, the better. The experience wasn’t just mine, my siblings shared it, they also write though not as seriously as I do. Of course, it could also be connected to genetics but I think it’s mostly the environment. But yes, in terms of writing, I started early, almost as soon as I could read, the next step was to try and tell stories through writing or drawing.
Interestingly, my academic background isn’t in literature but science, I have a science background, I am a physicist so there was a divergence at some point in terms of my professional development in writing. As much as I loved telling stories during my childhood, I had a stronger interest in science, it was never in my mind to study English. As much as I write nowadays, I only focus on short stories and long-form fiction, and I’ve been able to break free from my bad habit of writing poetry.
Portia: Haha, okay! You mentioned being a physicist as much as a writer, is it much of a dichotomy for you?
Martin: Not really. It is more of a natural extension, they come from the same source though one is more rigorous, i.e., physics, in the sense that it has a lot of rules that nature will not forgive you for breaking whereas with literature, you have a lot of creative freedom; a person can be 10ft tall or 20ft tall in a story. Apart from the in-built differences in both spheres, I don’t see it as strange that one person embodies both and there are so many examples of people who straddle these different spheres of thinking in academia and it’s no surprise to me.
Portia: Alright, I was reading your recent collection of short stories, “The Waiting” and I noticed that you used a plethora of typically Ghanaian words that you didn’t bother providing a glossary for. Does this mean that your writings are for a particular audience?
Martin: Well, when I write, I do not specifically have an audience in mind but I know that there are sub-groups that will understand the words better than others. You have picked on the language but there are deeper layers that I have found escapes people when they read because their background is different. For example, almost all of the writing builds a lot on Catholic tradition, a reader would have to understand certain things in Catholic and Christian traditions. There are many metaphors in those stories that people miss simply because they do not have that Christian background. When I use Ghanaian words, I know that a Ghanaian would understand better what I’m trying to communicate. I prefer not to explain, I don’t think that explaining simple words is necessary, the words are written in context for a reason; so that the essence of what I am saying is not lost, I have even made it a point not to italicize them because I do not see that to be necessary. Primarily, I know that the people who engage with my work are people like me and they’ll be able to relate to my work more. I once sat with an academic who wanted us to talk about Mr. Happy and this academic wasn’t familiar with the Bible so a lot of the metaphors in Mr. Happy were opaque to her, and it was some of her students that had to point out some of the references in the story. For example, the ladder (in Mr Happy and the Hammer of God) was based on Jacob’s struggle and triumph.
When you see someone who is not clothed, it doesn’t mean that the person can’t survive generally but you’ll see that a person who is performing all their activities not clothed is not fully there, they don’t have the things which are needed to operate in life. So by making that individual naked, they are essentially stripped of modern life, they are more or less elemental with all the other things that are there; the water, the rocks, everything.
– Martin Egblewogbe
Portia: Okay, that makes sense. Do you have particular themes or issues that captivate you enough to want to discuss them in your works?
Martin: Hmm, when I look back at what I’ve written I can see a trend. When I put together collections of short stories, I try to make them thematically related, for example, while putting together Mr. Happy there was the question of the happiness of an individual in society vis-a-vis the extraction of personal happiness from the community and how they also output situations that make other people happy. That sort of theme. The whole idea of personal happiness versus what the society can offer was quite important so I tried to present it in different ways throughout the book. Most of those stories were written with that in mind and even more recent stories also have that sort of tenor. As for the Gonjon Pin, even though I wanted it to be farcical, I can see that it has that sort of theme in there, of individual insufficiency of happiness. I think that it’s something in my work, that there’s always a question of happiness: are we happy about this? how does society treat us?
Then, of course, there’s also the religious aspect, which is also very important. It is a continuous question, a re-evaluation, and also sometimes a very critical look at things happening in the religious space. In The Waiting, The Going Down of Pastor Mintumi, highlights the fact that some of the people we see as great men of God also have flaws. I think that as my writing develops, I’m exploring much more mundane aspects of life but in surprising settings. There’s this story in my yet-to-be-released anthology about someone who has to marry his dead girlfriend. It’s a love story but an extreme one. These are the kind of structures I think my stories kind of lean towards even though I might not be conscious of it.
Portia: So, is it possible to be a writer or a poet today whose work isn’t affected by the politics of their land? Is it possible to completely avoid politics in one’s writing?
Martin: Hmm, this is a difficult one. If you take a look at the early post-independence writers, at least in Ghana, you’ll observe that the political backdrop was central, we were coming out of the colonial period, and everything had to be about the black person and our freedom, the politics were strong in those stories and even though some of the stories weren’t specifically about politics, the political undertones still reflected in the writing. I think that a person could also write and be affected by politics without the politics being evident in the story. I believe that is possible to completely remove contemporary politics from your work, though recently, many people are writing in metaphors and you’d probably have to go a little bit beyond to see that what they’ve written is talking about a political system. So maybe it is inescapable that a person would have to reflect on a political situation, however, the way it appears can be very well cloaked in metaphors.
Let me ask again what you mean by politics in writing because I can read into it several different layers.
Portia: You know sometimes writers feel like they must be committed to a certain ideology, maybe gender, religion, neoliberalism, colonial powers, anything of that. Should writers be obliged to write about these things or can they ignore these things? Can writing be pursued for its aesthetics? For the beauty of storytelling? Can a writer choose to solely entertain? Must your work have any direct purpose for the people?
Martin: I think that this is a very important question and I consider it a lot. I consider it when I read epics, stories as old as 5000 years, I recently went back to read the Epic of Gilgamesh, it’s a story that talks in-depth about human behaviour and I think that’s why that work has stood the test of time. Some stories are engaging but are ephemeral and the question is, is that where the writer wants to engage? it depends on the writer but personally, I am not in support of writing aiding propaganda so I wouldn’t want to write a story that is trying to make people change their minds about a certain system, I would like to present things as they are, give a little twist in the story but not emphasize on a certain political movement, making politics the primary reason of writing doesn’t appeal to me at all.
Portia: Yes, yes, definitely, as a writer your authenticity matters. The politics may appeal to somebody else and it will serve a very important purpose for them. So, enough about you, let’s move on to WPG, I know from my reading about WPG that you founded it with Laban Carrick and Mamle Kabu. Can you tell us more about the vision that moved you towards founding Writers Project Ghana?
Martin: Okay, so yeah, it’s a story that has many different legs, like a river downstream that has so many tributaries upstream, when you are looking at the river at the end sometimes it’s easy to forget all the little rivulets that contributed. Where do I start? This has been going on for a very long time, if I were to put a finger down at the genesis, it would be with Open Air Theatre in Legon. There was this radio program called Open Air Theatre on Radio Universe, I got introduced into the program and eventually took over as a host, from there I started building a community of writers, essentially of poets, and so we had already had a community that had been built. By 2004/2005 we had started organizing programs on campus, poetry recitals where we had people come and do recitals including the late Kofi Awoonor who was interested in what we were doing; he used to come for the readings. Forward from that, Laban came into town, he was a visiting scholar in Cape Coast [University of Cape Coast] and he had come across a poem of mine that he was fascinated by and was teaching to his students He got in touch with the publisher, Woeli, who then put him in touch with me. I met with Laban and we had a chat, it was quite clear that we had similar interests and goals and so we came together to organize readings, we organized readings in the front lawn of my office with the community that we had already built individually, these readings were very successful and so much fun. We decided then that we would go ahead and form a sort of organization, at that point, we were thinking of a collective and so we started off with Ghana Poetry Project and the idea was that we would keep doing these readings and also try at some point to put together some anthologies which we did. But subsequently we wanted to make it more encompassing and so we spoke to Mamle Kabu as well and through all of that the shift from the Ghana Poetry Project to a more global Writers Project [of Ghana] was made. Writers Project Ghana, was registered but the core objective remained pretty much the same, we wanted to amplify the voices of young emerging writers whose works are not yet known and also bring visibility to writers, particularly Ghanaian writers, first to the Ghanaian public and then to an international public.
We were also interested in seeding opportunities for new writers so that new writers can have leverage, we were interested in doing things like workshops etc.
In essence, WPG is an organization that is happy to be seen through what it does, for example, when we have a radio program, we are happy that people see the radio program and not Writers Project per se. Same goes for when we organize festivals and writing workshops. It’s through the programs we are doing that we interact directly with the public so those are the ways that we want the public to see us.
Portia: Yes, definitely, it also is a wonderful platform for writers to get to know one another, exposure is always good. Alright, so your Gonjon Pin was the title story for the 2014 Caine Prize anthology of African short stories. Did this recognition affect your writing in any way?
And by extension, do you think international recognition, prizes, fellowships, and awards affect the craft of contemporary poets in any way?
Martin: Oh yes! It is a big deal. Such exposures cannot be looked down upon in any way. Being in the Caine prize workshop boosted my connections in the literary sphere as a first step and then the fact that Gonjon Pin was selected as the title story was also quite important, I always find it funny that it was selected because I don’t consider the Gonjon Pin to be a typical Caine Prize story, and after that, the story got several very interesting reviews from different parts of the world which also gave certain visibility which wasn’t there earlier.
The reviews for my books have been flattering as well as unflattering, a review that’s not flattering is almost as good as an unflattering one, you know because what it does is put the work of the writer out there for other people to engage and form their own opinion. That exposure due to winning the prize was beneficial to me.
I believe that is possible to completely remove contemporary politics from your work, though recently, many people are writing in metaphors and you’d probably have to go a little bit beyond to see that what they’ve written is talking about a political system. So maybe it is inescapable that a person would have to reflect on a political situation, however, the way it appears can be very well cloaked in metaphors.
– Martin Egblewogbe
Portia: Alright, you mentioned earlier that you were surrounded by a community of young poets from the onset of WPG, I also have lots of friends who know you and talk about you and your work. Do they talk about their challenges? What do you think are the challenges that a young poet in Ghana might face?
Martin: I think that the challenges are ever-changing. When we first started 20 years ago with Open Air Theatre, those little readings, and other events, they were pretty much about accessibility: people couldn’t share their work and that was a huge obstacle, the internet wasn’t very much in use then, people weren’t aware of blogging, etc. Nowadays, there are accessible platforms where people can share their works, the internet has made it possible for people to have access to a lot of opportunities and get published.
The challenges have been changing as the years go by, right now as I see it, I think the challenge facing young writers who want to take their writing further is making sure that their work has a certain level of editorial scrutiny, they are looking for people who can edit their work at a certain level so that when they put the work out there, the skill shines through. Young people right now are primarily looking for editorial assistance.
Secondly, they are also looking to win some of the big prizes in the literary world, you know, and a lot of those prizes want you to have some sort of published output, more and more we are now getting to the stage where people are looking for a certain quality in their work. It also comes back to the publishing industry that we have locally, there have been improvements, we have fairly robust improvements in people getting their works published now unlike before but I have to say that certain publishing companies did remarkably well in the 80s and 90s. Very interesting books: poetry, novels, etc were published in that period, publishers like Sub-Saharan put out good works, there’s been a flourishing in the industry recently, we have many more publishers outputting across spectrums, publishing academic work, novels, poetry, memoirs, collection of stories, fiction. Now, we can get books published but can we sell them? That’s the other challenge that young writers are facing and so they are using all sorts of creative ways to sell, people organizing poetry shows to sell their books and boost sales. As much as new challenges are rearing up, old challenges are also being solved and that’s progress.
Portia: Yes, that’s promising. If you had to construct a poet out of whole cloth, what attributes would you give them? What would you say is a greater quality a poet should have?
Martin: Hmm, the answer may not be a very happy one. I think that a poet must in reality be someone who has undergone or is undergoing a kind of suffering.
Portia: Haha! I think Ernest Hemingway believed something like that.
Martin: Haha, yes, such a person can see the pain and feel pain. I think that kind of focuses the person’s perspective, the pain doesn’t have to be physical. Over centuries past, we’ve encountered people who talk from a place of deep seriousness because they have experienced savagery and other things in life and their writing is markedly better and you’ll feel that they are connecting better. Let me add that I’m not advising anyone to go experience suffering in other to be a good writer.
Portia: Yeah, but pain gives birth to a certain sensitivity within the self.
Martin: Yeah.
Portia: What about a person’s mastery over language?
Martin: This is a really interesting question because what does it mean to have mastery over language? Some writers do not have mastery over the English language but the stories they tell, powerful stories e.g., Amos Tutuola. I don’t know about mastery of language per se but where we are in our stage of progress, if you are writing a type of story that includes language, the essence of language as part of the story, you have to get the language right, if I try to write my stories in bad English it won’t go anywhere because of the type of stories I write so the language matches a part of the telling. Writers take liberties in writing but does it mean that they aren’t masters of the language? Haven’t they written masterfully?
Portia: Okay. Martin, you’ve published two anthologies by new and often younger poets, would you say there’s a distinction in their themes, commitment, and styles in comparison to works by older generation poets?
Martin: It is a really difficult one because I don’t think that I’ve seen enough of both the new and the old but one thing I can say is that poets are always talking about the things that matter to them. I have noticed that contemporary poets can directly tackle contemporary political themes quite easily, writing poems that speak about the system, the kind of politics we have, the economic realities, etc. They also have more generic themes of love and death. There are also gender and environmental issues tackled as well, more of those themes now than previously. I’m not sure why but I think maybe it is due to these topics being largely discussed in the media.
Portia: Yes, yes, I’m currently reading this new book written by a South African writer (I can’t pronounce her name) and it is about climate change and I was quite intrigued. But when it comes to style, would you say that they are more innovative in terms of breaking the norm and form as opposed to previously?
Martin: Hmm, I don’t think so. One of the things I think is different though is the mixing of languages. Writers and poets writing in the multilingual way that Ghanaians speak. In a single conversation Ghanaians switch from English to Ga or Ewe and contemporary writers have been able to transfer that into their poetry. This kind of multilingualism in writing wasn’t there before. Aside from this slight difference I don’t think I’ve seen anything revolutionary in terms of breaking norm and form.
Portia: Do you think a writer needs a solid tradition on which to stand to develop their craft?
Martin: That’s also an interesting question. Yes, the person must have grounding, writing is a craft and every craft requires practice and research, you ought to have studied different works; what kind of writing was being written previously, and what kind of writing currently persists, there’s so much development involved.
For example, when you read an African novel, you should be able to tell that it’s an African story without knowing its author, when you read a Japanese story, you should be able to identify the story, and so on. There is that sort of texture that comes with time. A writer will have to immerse themselves in some sort of tradition, I know several prominent thinkers would suggest that if you are calling yourself an African writer then you should be so steeped in the African tradition that your stories can draw from it, your stories should be authentic and draw from the origin that you identify as.
Portia: That’s beautiful! So, you’ve dedicated a lot of your life to writing and literature, telling stories and writing poems, a part of you must believe that stories not only matter but also change the world.
Martin: Yes.
Portia: In what ways do you think stories change the world and people?
Martin: Yes, you know it goes both ways: stories change the world and the world changes stories. First, as human beings, one of the things that stories do is enhance our interconnectedness and help us understand the world better and try to remove that hermetically sealed mind space. Thinking about it, it’s quite possible to go through life believing that everything around you don’t exist and you create everything that is there because you live in your head. How do you then know that other people exist and feel what you feel? One way to see a different perspective of life other than yours is by communication, storytelling. Primarily, I think that what storytelling does is make us feel more like a community, it enhances our sociality. In terms of going on to change the world, I think there are much bigger forces at play. I think that stories in general terms can impact humans in a good or bad way depending on how they are told e.g propaganda being told to frighten people or cause disarray. I like to separate storytelling which aims to examine the human condition from that kind of writing. Storytelling that examines the human condition impacts people personally because it causes people to question themselves and reflect.
Portia: Yes, this is true. I’ve been thinking about how stories and poems can make us feel that such abstract emotions like love, empathy, and compassion exist because it’s easy to get carried away by the negativity of the world and question if these positive emotions exist. We ask if love is true if humans are still capable of empathy and then you read something that somebody has written and hope raises in your heart that humans still cherish those emotions, in a sense writing is something that beautifies the world and gives us hope.
Martin: Yes, that’s true.
Portia: That’s amazing! It has been so lovely talking to you, Martin, thank you for agreeing to be part of this.
Martin: Thank you for having me.
Martin Egblewogbe is a senior lecturer in Physics at the Department of Physics, University of Ghana. He is the author of the collection of short stories, The Waiting (lubin & kleyner, 2020) and Mr Happy and The Hammer of God and other Stories (Ayebia, 2012). His writing has appeared in a number of collections, such as The Gonjon Pin (2014 Caine Prize anthology), PEN America’s Passages Africa (2015), All The Good Things Around Us (2016), Litro #162: Literary Highlife (2017), Between The Generations (2020), Shimmering at Sunset (2021), Voices That Sing Behind The Veil (2022). Martin was the commissioning editor for the anthology Resilience: A Collection (2021), and also co-edited the anthology of short stories, The Sea Has Drowned the Fish (2018) as well as the anthologies of poetry Look where you have gone to sit (Woeli, 2010) and According to Sources (Woeli, 2015). He is a co-founder and a director of the Writers Project of Ghana, and was director of Pa Gya! A Literary Festival in Accra in the 2017 – 2022 editions. He also hosts the radio show, Writers Project on Citi FM.