Ejiro Elizabeth Edward is a writer from Nigeria. She is the winner of Antoa Poetry Contest 2021. She has been published in Olney Magazine, Lolwe, Hoax, Down river road, Native skin, Consequence Forum, Isele Magazine, Nigerian-news Direct Column, Serotonin, and elsewhere. She is the curator of the Benin art and book festival, a three-day event aimed at promoting reading and the appreciation of art in Benin city. She looks forward to being an MFA student and getting her chapbook published.
Precious Okpechi: Hi Elizabeth, it’s nice to have you as our featured poet for the month. In your poem, “The Heavy Lucent of Dreaming” you write about how love and “loving one another” have neither stopped nor shielded us from the horrors of war. What inspired this poem?
Ejiro Elizabeth Edward: The poem, “The heavy Lucent of dreaming” is largely inspired by the series of unfortunate events happening in the country. After the train killing and the massacre of individuals in the church, I suffered nightmares of a war outbreak. My fear wasn’t for myself, it was for my friends living in the North. After having a series of calls with those of them living in the North, I couldn’t sleep and out of fear I spent days praying and I felt it wasn’t enough. My love for them wasn’t enough to protect them from the trauma they were facing being in Kaduna and having to be in constant danger. That was what inspired the poem.
Precious Okpechi: What is your creative process like, and do you have any ritual you adhere to prior to writing a poem?
Ejiro Elizabeth Edward: My creative process is reading and reading. Consistently in search of knowledge. That is my key! But in truth, most times my poems come to me in dreams. I may have consistent thoughts about issues happening in the country and I will be craving to write about them. Sometimes it comes easily but other days I would write a word or two and then leave it for about three days. Then it becomes clearer and it takes shape.
Precious: Your poem, “i could be a lover too when i am not a prerequisite” talks about the kind of desire and intimacy you want from a lover. You write;
I want to hang on the throat of all my lovers, say unforgettable, say my name, say my body bathed in blue light, say half nude, say half bravery.
Can you talk to me about this intimacy, and how it may(not) have been redefined by the pandemic?
Ejiro: This particular line is about sex and passionate lovemaking. My intention was to capture the desire to be unforgettable in the mind of the lovers I have ever come across. Also, to capture what it is to open up one’s body for another to see your scars and body parts, I think it is a very brave thing to do. But then, later in the poem, I shift to this:
There is a gap between my teeth ready to allow for flooding, ready to allow for your body filling up spaces long occupied by people I gave up or lost. I am in the habit of losing things, I hope I do not lose you
In these lines, I capture my inability to stay in a relationship for long, my restless soul desiring much more than love. This time around I know the person I refer to is going to be heartbroken if I should leave because he was the one person I know who truly loved me, thus the rendition.
To your question, as regards the pandemic, I think true intimacy surpasses time and physical contact or sex. It involves two souls being knitted together, and even with the “no touching rules” two people, although far apart, can still solely be one. This is the kind of intimacy I believe in and love and search for.
Precious: In the poems featured here, you talk about your language(s) being “broken and jagged.” Tell me about the tediousness of living in a multilingual country and how it plays in your poems.
Ejiro: There’s a very interesting fact you should know about me, I have a British accent and this was not in any way learnt. Funny, I was born in Lagos, I am delta by origin and my mother is Edo. The people I live with are Igbos but I have a British accent and the very first question people ask me is if I was Born abroad! When I tell people I live in Ajegunle Lagos, there is a great unbelieve and there was a time it troubled me greatly. In times of great distress or being surrounded by Agbero’s, I have found the skill of language as my saviour because I somehow find the ability to switch into pidgin or surprisingly Yoruba. Call it a case of Fight or Flight, but this ability has shown me the importance of speaking different languages.
Nigeria is a big country and its multilingual factor plays a vital role in its citizens’ lives. In Lagos, to get your way through market bargains and dealings with Agberos, you have to be flexible by switching to Yoruba or pidgin; this way, the people know you are a part of the soil and cannot be easily cheated. The Igbo brothers would prefer to buy goods from someone who speaks the language even when the person is not Igbo.
Language in this poem is used as a form of survival. Another National language used by Nigerians is Pidgin and thus the reference of it being “broken and jagged,” as pidgin is often referred to as broken language. Jagged implies the harsh words found in the use of pidgin language and that thugs and men of the night utilize the language.
Precious: What are those poems you read repeatedly for their richness, for how they define and set the bar for the kind of poetry you want to write?
Ejiro: I wouldn’t say what but rather who are those people that I read continuously because they keep setting the bar for me. I remember clearly in a workshop by Chris Abani at the Lagos Poetry Festival, he said I write like Warsan Shire. This I believe was because I read her over and over as a beginning artist then. Right now, one person that consistently raises the bar for me is Romeo Oriogun. His nomad collection I find totally exhilarating. I read it almost every week and still can’t get over it because it’s extremely brilliant. Also, I read Safia Ehillo, Fatima Ashgar, Sadiq Dzukogi, my favourite poet and brother Martins Deep and members of the Deadliners are a great inspiration to my work.
As regards the pandemic, I think true intimacy surpasses time and physical contact or sex. It involves two souls being knitted together, and even with the “no touching rules” two people, although far apart, can still solely be one. This is the kind of intimacy I believe in and love and search for.
– Ejiro Elizabeth Edward
Drowning is a quiet thing
Lover,
I am a fraud in a language that I do not speak. My tongue is rolled up in a language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up my mother tongue, rifles through other languages and claims them as vocabularies just to say I love you.
I dig into the hollows of flesh that is your throat, they say drowning is a quiet thing, I slit my hands while you are gone in hope that you will find me. You do not.
They say faith is something that slips through the body, just like sunlight cracks open through my eyes each morning, after waiting for the chariots to swing low.
I have dug up a hole in my body in hope that I preserve sunlight, preserve faith, preserve you.
I am a fraud in a language
I do not speak
claiming them as vocabularies
To say I love you, I really do.
They say
Drowning is a quiet thing
I slit my hands
In hope I preserve
sunlight. Preserve
You.
Nomad
i.
Call me a nomad. I am a sojourner looking for a place to land softly. l am twice as light as a ghost. My feet keep dodging the earth.
I flee from city to city, awaiting the next train pulling me into another. I am always leaving, always departing.
O god! cloud propeller, path maker, protect me through this wretched road. I am always saying goodbye, always leaving hunger in the throat of my lover. A lover is always lighting a candle, praying for my feet to land. My mother stretches her hands towards the sky, beseeching Osanobua, to root her daughter in a man’s arm.
ii.
I am from blanket parachutes made up of midnight storms and lamplight, guiding the city’s rush hours.
Within my tongue is a rift, the size of an axe cut.
Every language I speak is broken & jagged.
I am from a line of wretched history. I am trying to make something good out of nothing!
My grandmother, who was once a hawker, bargained in the night for bread. She danced the dance of the night, wrestled with angels, demons, for a parcel to keep the spirit and body together.