Ọbáfẹ́mi Thanni is a Nigerian poet whose works of poetry and fiction have received Pushcart Prize nominations. An alumnus of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study’s Writers’ Workshop, he spends his time between the cities of Ibadan and Lucille, making attempts at beauty.
Olúwatamílọ́re Ọ̀shọ́: Hello Ọbáfẹ́mi, it’s a pleasure to have you featured as our poet of the month. My first question is directed toward your writing, what are the central themes at play in your writing, and what would you describe your writing voice as?
Ọbáfẹ́mi Thanni: It’s an honour to be featured here, Olúwatamílọ́re . Thank you for having me. If I think of themes as recurring curiosities and obsessions, then some of those at play are memory, tenderness, faith, nostalgia, desire and language.
The question of a writing voice is best answered by time, and at this time, mine is fledging.
Olúwatamílọ́re Ọ̀shọ́: Begin again. This time with the knowledge that tenderness is a fruit. & what you seek is the dark loam of a home. Say garden. Say the soul of a fruit is its flavour. Remember the flavour of the exhale after a kiss, the brief hunger of lips waiting to touch, & listen, as the air whirls into a compass, pointing.
This is from your poem, “outside Eden every sweetness is the fruit of disobedience” on Perhappened Mag. Can you talk to me about how longing and tenderness play a role in an artist’s relationship with their craft? Also, what inspired this poem?
Ọbáfẹ́mi Thanni: Ah, Tenderness. The limits of the artist’s medium – in my practice, language – inevitably embeds each unit of expression – words, then sentences – with some form of longing. A longing to bridge the gulf between sensation, idea or vision and expression.
Rapturous moments – when expressions are apt and graze the very silk of sensation – are few and far between. What is recurrent – even necessary to experience those few moments – is failure. The gulf is unyielding. In this sense, longing is the fuel that sustains the artist through recurrent failure. Tenderness is the vital sensitivity that calibrates each failure against the gulf.
Longing says, thinking of memory, I have failed, again, to keep you vivid on the page. And Tenderness whispers, is this failure more exquisite than the last? Are you closer or farther from the silk? What words, phrases, fragments, could bring you closer?
How long one can keep this conversation going could determine, among other sensibilities, how long one’s relationship with craft lasts.
I saw, on a walk, a tree in full bloom. Then, a flock of birds darkened the evening sky. The tree became bare. The poem began.
Olúwatamílọ́re Ọ̀shọ́: As a multi-genre writer, what impact does narrative have across those genres?
Ọbáfẹ́mi Thanni: The impulse to tell a story is intrinsically human and forms an undercurrent across genres. Yet, narratives are more than their incidents, and I find the manner of an incident’s unravelling far more alluring than the incident itself. This inclination leads me to indulge in the how of a narrative rather than the what, even in genres that traditionally insist on narrative incidents. While the conceptual divide between the narrative and lyric can be useful, it is not infallible. The allures are interdependent, so I tinker with their balance.
Olúwatamílọ́re Ọ̀shọ́: What other art forms are you largely influenced by?
Ọbáfẹ́mi Thanni: Everything has its language. My attention to art forms like painting, drawing, music, film, performance and sculpture broadens my lenses, my language.
Olúwatamílọ́re Ọ̀shọ́: Whose works are you currently inspired by?
Ọbáfẹ́mi Thanni: I am re-learning, through Toni Morrison’s work, the awestriking potential of language and craft. Pamílèrín Jacob’s poetic engagement with the divine is layering my conceptions of faith and the potential for inching towards the surreal, for bridging its attendant gulfs.
The impulse to tell a story is intrinsically human and forms an undercurrent across genres. Yet, narratives are more than their incidents, and I find the manner of an incident’s unravelling far more alluring than the incident itself. This inclination leads me to indulge in the how of a narrative rather than the what
– Ọbáfẹ́mi Thanni
Eclipse
Like the sun, a father sustains life by his distance.
A world kneels before the anguish of a son weeping
For his father and calls it salvation.
I want to know the soft of your shoulder. Yet
Let thy will be done. Let the rage be nourished.
I have not told you, father, but we have desire
In common. I too have wanted a year to be my
Last. Yet, the body outlasts my desire to leave it.
Durability and frailty blending like the healed
Windows slit into my skin. My arms were too
Naïve to embrace contradictions when I wished
For your death to cure my longing. I know now
The wish was needless. A child’s prayer said amiss.
If I call you absent, are you close enough to hear?
It is not love, but knowledge, that forbids
Your dying. I know now, there is nothing we find
Worthier of forgiveness than a dead father.