Lukpata Lomba Joseph is a Nigerian poet. He studies Petroleum Engineering at the University of Port Harcourt. He has works published in the Tipton Poetry Journal, South Florida Poetry Journal, Jacar Press’s One Magazine, Isele Magazine, Caustic Frolic Journal, Agbowo Magazine, FourXFour Journal, and elsewhere. In 2018, he worked as an op-ed writer for Joshua’s Truth – an online weekly magazine based in Miami. Lukpata has been nominated for a Best of the Net award. He resides in Port Harcourt.

Precious Okpechi: Hello Lukpata, it’s great to have you as our featured poet for the month. I am reading your poem “Pulse” in Isele Magazine and these lines come to mind: It costs too much to own one’s body. / I am walking the fuck outta here. The resignation of the persona in the poem is evident and raw; can you tell me more about this piece?

Lukpata Lomba Joseph: Firstly, thank you. I feel honoured to be selected for this spotlight; I didn’t see it coming. “Pulse” happens to be one of the poems I have written without subsequent edits. It was really a tough decision sending this poem out for publication because I felt it revealed a lot about me: my unhappy childhood, and everything I have been through as a young adult. I opted to be more effusive here, as opposed to my characteristic deadpan delivery, because I wasn’t just writing a poem but was also reminding myself of my pain. The persona in this poem is a depressed soul seeking a path out of his toxic inhabitation. When I sent this piece to a friend for review, his feedback was nothing short of amusing. He told me how much he felt that the poem needed edits, and, at same time, how much he felt the poem should be left the way it is, notwithstanding the urge to prune and tweak some lines.

Precious Okpechi: There’s something about the imageries in your poems, something you describe as “rustic scenes”. I am thinking about lines like this: Somewhere on news, a foreign beast / twirls out of the murk, fills across waters / and leaves dust in every street

Is this the space you think in, or an intentional process in your writing? What’s its significance?

Lukpata Lomba Joseph: My writing has evolved through different phases. I have tried different styles and explored different themes while searching for a voice. When I started writing, I wrote mostly religious poems (none of which survives). Currently, I try to write about just anything, but somehow, I often find myself writing about my childhood the most. 

I grew up in the countryside, in a village in northern Cross River State. As a result, I know a lot about farming, hunting, the forest, local herbs and more. While I don’t write pastorals in the strict sense of the word, I have written poems in the past where I explicitly describe what it means to live in the countryside. I’ve also found idealized images of the country dispersed throughout my work without any prior plan to evoke them. The appropriate word I thought would describe these recurring images is “rustic” i.e. suitable for or relating to the countryside. For me, every poem has its mode of evolution, and sometimes I simply go with the flow without stopping. For the quoted poem, the evocation of these imageries was not an intentional process. I didn’t think “Oh, let me write these lines to evoke feelings of a rustic environment.” In the wake of a new pandemic, I decided to try my hand at a poem that captures the events at the time, and the result was “Troubling Things” – the poem you just quoted, published by Backchannels Journal.

Precious: I believe that aspects of our lives inform our writing in their own minute ways. So, how does being a student of petroleum engineering and a part time software developer/computer programmer also inform your craft?

Lukpata: Both computer programming and engineering involve critical thinking and rigorous studies to stay abreast with happenings. I have not written poems about drilling rigs, oil wells and Christmas trees. How would that be anyway? Haha. I have, however, been able to transfer the culture of rigorous study and research into my writing, and this has greatly improved my works. In addition to having our personal fires – which is the major weapon when we confront the page – the first step in writing good poetry is reading. This is where the writer needs to research and to study. It’s through this process that we discover new patterns to try out in our works. Speaking of computer programming, one could spend a whole day writing a code that doesn’t run. This has taught me resilience when it comes to dealing with rejection emails, which are part and parcel of being a writer. It only means we don’t necessarily get things right on the first try.

Precious: Toni Morrison in her speech to the Ohio Arts Council said: “If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” Tell me about that one book or poem you want to read or write about.

Lukpata: A textbook entirely dedicated to two aspects of poetry: metaphor and sound. I have read a couple of materials on metaphor, but I’m still not satisfied. Maybe I have yet to read that material that will change my world.

Precious: There’s so much going on in today’s society. What does it mean to you to be a poet at this point in history?

Lukpata: It means many things. We live in a society that is growing increasingly too heavy for its citizens. Everyone is crying. We are plagued by many things. While these happenings give me a lot to write about as a poet, I have to think of the displaced, the less-privileged, and the victims of this quagmire who are supposed to be the readers of the works I write. Sometimes, as an artist, I reflect upon the change that my art can truly bring. We’ve been discussing the ills of the society in diverse voices, but the true question remains “in what way can our art help remedy these problems?” The truth is that regular people don’t care so much about art, and even if they do, it’s definitely not poetry. As a result, we end up telling these stories to the same familiar audience – fellow writers – who are also telling the same stories. In this regard, I’m not in any way alluding to the fact that writers aren’t victims; rather I’m thinking of the entire population of which writers form only a small fragment. Nonetheless, I have to continue writing about these happenings whenever the muse comes.  This way, we will have a rich archive for future generations.

May Shivers

In my study, a stream of May air percolates
through torn window screen, shifting the curtains
left and right. A brown cat sits under the table
and stares ahead.  I take a look at the wreck 
outside: a firm handshake, a hole in the mask,
a brief walk for watermelon at the greengrocer’s.
I light a blunt and watch my fears
curl in a smoke to heaven – it’s still noon.

Memories as Portrait of Passing Objects

memories are hoodlums at the farcorners of lonely nights. I slink

out of my body and leave
silence as a homage to my mother who 
would come seeking the chest of a recluse.
the new season comes with nightmares
overlapping the length of my sleep. my heart
has learnt to frequent these streets;
in each trip, a speck of dust foments
a second look through little
wrecks: passing

love, passing 
bodies, passing 
calla lilies, 
flotsam.
how do I live in my body? (I, spectator 
of passing objects).
sometimes delusion is an escape
from terror, like middays in an endless
loop flushed with false pride.