Poet-Pilgrim (ft. Uche Nduka)

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This is the Poet Speaks.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the poet Speaks Podcast, the number one spoken word poetry podcast in the world. And our next guest is a Nigerian American poet, pilgrim, cologist and essays presently living in New York City. He's the author of fifteen volumes of poems, of which the latest are Bainbridge Island Notebook and Two Umber. His essays on music, poetry, morality, politics and travel have appeared in various online and print outlets. Everyone a big, warm round

Feeling great? Feeling good?

Yes, with this wonderful New York City weather, You're used to it. I guess, I guess we're used to it. Well, thanks so much for being on our show. Today. We really do appreciate you spending time and giving us some of your time today. So I guess, I mean I have a billion questions for you. Really love your work, love what you represent, and love what you've done and what you've been doing. But I guess I kind of I want to start off my first question you. I mean,

I think that I see poetry basically as exploration itself. You know, it's something that helps us see the world from different perspectives, and it's something that is continually in process, So it's just journey. So those physical geographic journeys I had, I think they definitely influence my poetry, My poetry itself is sort of a pilgrimage. That's why I see myself as a pilgrim. I'm being in different spaces in terms of culture, geography, ideas, and different kinds of people who

Poet. We ssh to surprise us.

Poet weish to challenge the way we see reality and the way we live our lives. It's not just something you write because you know, you just feel like writing.

I think it's rather a calling and not a job. Wow, that is deep.

I mean, so what in what ways what made you come to that conclusion in all your years? I mean, what kind of made you really realize poetry is that type of journey? What was it? Was it a moment, a pivotal event? What was it that has led you to that very deeper meaning of a really niche form of art that many people don't consider poetry as something that changes reality? What lets you do that?

Well?

I think it's simply experience, perhaps, and my inclination and temperament right from when I was born in Nigeria, let me say my first teny years, you know, during the Nigerian Civil War. That war took about four years of my life. So to say, I've always seen reality as something a little bit questionable. It seems very unstable. It's not something I just as Zuume I know, or something I zeume I can claim. And part of all that, due to my own work, is that it makes the

I think any kind.

Of anti intellectualism, anti ecstaticism, is the kind of tragedy. So for me as a person, I feel I'm living in my element. I'm being myself when I write poems. I don't have actually lots of theories about it, but I just feel this is what I'm called. I'm putting the planet to do, and I'm just going to keep doing it.

I love that. I love that it's what your call to do and you're just going to keep doing it now. I love that. I think that's very rare that people ever find that type of passion in their lives. I think that's very very rare to be able to find. I mean, so I guess the question of from that, you have to kind of ask what is your Like I said, Nigeria, Germany, New York City. I mean, what is your favorite favorite spot? What is your favorite environment to be in? Out of all those.

Places, I will say all of them, actually, because without Nigeria, I wouldn't be here, Psi and Europe itself. I lived in Germany and I lived in Holland. Those spaces helped grow my art and my artistry, my exposure to different ways of writing, different ways of seeing life, different cultures. I feel in lots of ways it tough on me as an artist and as a creative person. It's let me widen out, so to say, to embrace the world

You know, it keeps me busy.

There is no time when I'm really bored. There's no time when I feel I don't know what to write about. You know, there is no drought to my artistry or to my work. There is always something to write about, you know, particularly when I'm calm enough.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that. And so you mentioned that that term, I've actually never heard of it before, poet pilgrim. So that's what you call yourself. I mean, so tell me how how specifically has that shaped your writing? Like you said, you're a citizen of

Shapes it shaped the walk itself in sense of making it open to whatever is available. You know, it's almost like magnetic. It attracts the poem attracts what it needs, just like different books. For me, any book is an occasion to be able to try at least something I have not done before, either stylistically or automatically. So it is something that I find fruitful and ruition in terms of the work that I sold.

I solve poetry.

I love that. So kind of moving a bit along. So now, I mean, so now you're a citizen of New York City, of the world, but now currently you are in New York City. So as someone that knows New York City very well, New York City is the most intense, loud, busy buddy. I mean, you have a billion thoughts racing per minute living in a place like that.

I mean, how how for.

Someone like you that's so interceptive, you know, you're so introspective of the place you are. How does a place like the city, especially in these days, you know, this time period where in now? I mean, how has that the city of New York? I mean, how has that infiltrated your work as a writer?

In fact, I think that again it's in riches the work. You know, it brings so much to me to be able to put in poet. For instance, if I look around me there almost the whole world is in New York City. Almost everybody from different different mode column not planets now, but you know, turns of different parts of the world geographically, you know, the Asians, Europeans, Africans, Latin Americans,

I don't know why. I can't explain it.

But all New York has given me has been inspiration, and they challenge to be able to say, you know what, Yes, it's very very friend take here, it's busy here. But still I'm going to be doing what I'm putting the planet to do, which is write poetry, share with people, tish when your opportunity arises. Learn because I think that a poet is a perpetual student.

You always have to learn, you always have to be open.

It's to me not about the mastery that you must study art. I don't look at poetry in terms of mastery, you know. I look at it in terms of something that actually educates me, enlightens me, spiritualizes me as an individual. And so it's a very very humbling situation. And New York has continued to give me that.

I've actually never heard someone described as that poetry you said, so it humbles you, Yes, you use that word. Tell me how does poetry humble an individual?

Because for me, I see that as a service that I'm called to give you, know, and when you are this servant, you are in a humble situation. You are know heerchically. You know, a savant is lower, so to say, you know, just like the world a program. A program is not somebody who goes to own things. You know, you are there to experience things. That's why you are programming. You don't really own any space. You're just there temporarily. And to me, that's the way I see the work

Absolutely no love.

I love this.

I love this energy that you have towards poetry. Now I almost want to say, like as someone that's also Nigerian and Ebo. I mean, I feel like it's almost in our culture and our blood to really be of the arts. I honestly really do believe it's just in the spirit of our people. Tell me, I mean, how much how much of your kind of artistic as a poet? How much was that received well by your family? Was that?

Well, not quite. They didn't support it. They didn't discourage it, you know.

Impact I think it baffles them. I remember when I was a teenager, when I sat there writing and all that. At some point my dad just says, you know, you will have growed this. I'm not in a very not in a sort of a bitter way, but it just felt, you know, it's one of those faces your past, you know what I mean. At seventeen, you know you're just gonna have growed this and my first book, title Old Flower Child, appeared when I was twenty five in Nigeria,

Wow.

But I don't think that in terms of profession, because somehow he always felt, and I think the entire family felt, you're going to start read a poet, an artists, how are you going to live?

And so on. So I understand that kind of confusion.

It's as if I really confused them by what I took, seriously, what I showed that. Look, listen, I just realized this is my life's work. And as a teenager, for you to say that, of course, others are bound.

To say you are crazy.

How do you know you haven't even experienced it in life and all those things. But the truth of the matter, like you said about our culture, I remember my grandmother, my grandmother telling me, you know what, as a child, you were the best dancer in the village.

I loved dancing. I love dancing to you know, gongs.

I loved playing playing gongs, playing drums, you know, following masquerades around and being a masquerade myself, and all those sort of things that I didn't use the word art for.

They were just natural.

I grew up in that environment where music is not just for entertainment. It's usually something you used to celebrate birds, debts, seasons and so on, new youm festivals. You see, all those things to me were very very natural, and that presence of music is still I realize it's still in everything I've written, every book I've written, music has been very very central in there, without my even planning it to be.

You know.

So in terms of the family, like I said, now, in these days, they just have accepted it. It's about just the accepted that this is what this brother seems to be doing, and he's been doing it now for decades, so we just allow him to. So I appreciate the fact that this somehow there is no hostility towards it. But I say earlier on they didn't understand what hotu was about when I started doing it as a teenager.

Yeah, yeah, that's such a I mean, it's such an unfortunate it. I'll be frank with you. I feel like it's so unfortunate a lot of people, like you said, I mean, poetry, it has the power to change so much, bend reality. It's so unfortunate so many people that are poets, writers, they don't get maybe the proper familial support, you know what I mean that they should, because it is such an incredibly courageous endeavor as a career. You know, you

So we do.

We do appreciate, you know, for continuing on with your path, regardless of you know, whatever the up bringing, Brad, you know, following your heart. You've obviously changed a lot of people's lives with your amazing work. I mean, now what I find it what I find interesting about your poetry. So you blend language and reality, I mean, and I feel like that's an interesting kind of mix, you know, blending different languages as you write, I mean, have you ever

In fact, I was writing their line about that I think was yesterday or something, which is that I'm attracted. I'm drawn to teens that scar me. You know, if I look around, I might even find the you know, the exact whatever it is then where I wrote about it, because very I don't know how you even mentioned that, you know, suddenly, I'm very, very drawn to things that scare me because I feel I would say things that challenge me. Because if something doesn't challenge me, why why

Now?

Where does it want me to? Where does it want me to follow it to? And that actually comes back about being scary is a scary thing to do. But because I'm used to it now, I no longer use the word scary, you know, for it. It's just my way of being. And I realize that's the way that actually poems come to me, because somehow they seem to know that I'm open to whatever it is they're suggesting, whether it's very very contradictory, or whether it's something that

You know.

I know it's natural for us to be encouraged, for us to be praised. We love praises, to hear it and all that. But you know what, if the poem wants to contradict itself in terms of book to book the way it's doing in my own work.

I just follow it. I just follow it.

Like I said, again, I am there to be able to do what the poem wants me to do. And that's again it's just not easy to do.

Yeah.

Absolutely, this idea of being there to do what the poem wants you to do, it's almost it sounds almost to me like you, to lack of a better term, you submit yourself to the art. You submit yourself to what you believe is the greater power of the spoken word, the oral tradition. So that kind of leads me perfectly