The Logic: A Manifesto

“I will strengthen myself in the Lord.”

The English magazine, The Critic, publishes a column on the writing life by someone called “The Secret Author.” The first I read was “My advice to young writers.” It contains some wise takes, and some satiric ones. Shortly after reading it, I was on a call with two writer-friends and I told them, “I have done all the things they say you should never do as a young writer if you want to make it.” I don’t hide my politics (my values are more conservative in outlook), I have written negative reviews, and I don’t care much for connections inside the literary world.

We laughed about it. But it has cost me a few things—a major writer who suggested I edit a book of their interviews and whose biography I proposed writing took off because I disagreed with them (politely) on a political matter. It will yet cost me, and I am comfortable with that.

Many people consider this a reckless way to go. Years ago, a Nigerian poet visited me at my house in Abeokuta. This was before I had a “name,” when the rainbow was only a foreshadowing arc—it still is. He told me how he got or nearly got into trouble for refusing to publish a class of writers—or one writer from that class. I did not suspect that he was telling me to tread very carefully.

However, I remember an experience on Twitter (when it was still Twitter). I published a story in Agbowó in 2019 where the narrator described a lady’s private as “a public toilet anyone could use.” People suddenly appeared saying this was “sexist.” Even though I did not know what sexist meant, even though the metaphor was justified in the context of the story, given the environment where it was set (Bariga) and this was in fact how people in life talked about women, and my using it was no justification of that fact but was simply in keeping with what my literature teacher called “verisimilitude” (I was using the language of the culture that I was trying to portray in my story, and in fact the statement was true of the lady in the story, as it is true of men like that who are called “dogs”): I apologized. And I remember someone saying how this was growth: I was commended for apologizing, for bowing to the idea that to have had certain words thrown at you or what you write is to have been indicted, that certain words are so weighty they mean “guilty.”

There was a friend who called and was in awe that I had quoted an older Nigerian poet’s words (astounding to me, because am I not supposed to quote a writer if I am quoting them?).

I went on bowing, cowering. Shouting on the side of those people whose virtue lies in words like “sexism,” “gaslight” (I can recall the first time this word was used with me and the writer who used it, and he was the one gas-lighting), “homophobia,” “Islamophobia,” “racism,” “toxic masculinity,” and the like. These words are of course not without weight; but from late 2019 when I entered the literary scene and became everyone’s favorite poet till recently, the words are like nets cast in water, catching all kinds of things that do not bear any relation to them at all.

In the past two, three years, the sort of recklessness that I avoided by apologizing is the kind I have subscribed to and with no apologies. And I know many people think this is crazy; have I not been called “the black sheep,” “enfant terrible,” and—what again? Was it in 2023 that a Nigerian poet who once called me, in the DMs, “the future of African poetics,” came and said I would destroy my “reputation”? There were those who sent DMs and were too stunned to say a thing. There was a friend who called and was in awe that I had quoted an older Nigerian poet’s words (astounding to me, because am I not supposed to quote a writer if I am quoting them?).

What is the logic behind that kind of behavior? Let me share my manifesto with you.

A poet—a writer—must have no illusions. He must have no illusion of safety or security. He must know, as Geoffrey Hill said of William Shakespeare, both what is justly and unjustly expected of him. We are not called to fall in line as writers and poets, we are called to see things as they are. Literary cliques, literary associations, group-think and group-speak: they offer an illusion of security, of safety. All will be well if you simply behave yourself and do not look for trouble.

Once the writer comes to accept that illusion, his heart begins to shift. He starts to think about pleasing the community, being in people’s good books, winning favors, so that somehow something can find its way to him. I am not saying the poet should not be respectful (and there are times when I have been disrespectful: not in my criticism) and I am not saying you should not offer a helping hand or support your colleagues or congratulate people who win things. I am saying those are not the business of the kingdom, they are the lesser matters of the law. What the illusion does is to make the poet focus on peripheral issues rather than the main stuff: the art.

A poet—a writer—must have no illusions. He must have no illusion of safety or security.

Making poetry is risky business. People choose to subscribe to the illusions because it saves them from actually living with and going through the risk that poetry is. There is nothing easy, nothing to help you, as you go on your way to make great art. Not someone at the top. Not someone below. There is you, your talent, and the daemon that is the page. You have no securities.

I have done much of the things I have done and I will do the things I will do because I know that making poetry is a risky business and I do not want comforts that are no comforts. I want no illusions. Rather, I want to heighten the risk. I want to make art so good it does not need my politics to push it along; it does not get an applause simply because I am black or brown or I am a Nigerian. I want to earn my place—I don’t want to have it given when it has not been earned.

This is not to say people won’t help you along. People will bear your load sometimes, recommend you here and there, but that is only after the fact: the fact is—I have nothing but my gift and what I make of that gift by the grace of God. And truth-telling makes you see that: very clearly.

Two. This is a journey of faith. I am a Christian and my faith defines everything I do. If God stands on this side, I will not go and stand on the other side because I want awards or applause. I was saying to myself today: What is a hundred years to eternity, man? I have no securities in the flesh; my trust and my hope, my connection and my support is God, and I need nothing else.

We accept the illusions because we think God cannot make us. We need props. But we are not to walk by sight, by what we can see, by who we know, what school we go to. We walk by faith. Why? Because He who has called us is faithful and He is more than able to do (and do again) the impossible; He can be trusted on that one: “Behold, I will do a new thing; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.” In other words, I am glad to do the right thing even if it makes success impossible, because God deals in the impossible.

I saw a piece of writing about how we go on hoping even when we know things may not turn out as we hope. Well, things will turn out exactly as I hope they will, because the hope that I carry is not a feel good sort of thing; it is concreter than fish—it is in the God in whom there is no “shadow of turning,” a God who raised a dead Man and delivered me from depression and saved my soul. What is the Nobel to such a King? What is the Windham Campbell?

I love Romans 4 verse 18. It says that Abraham “against hope believed in hope.” That is the kind of statement you can only find in the Bible. To be certain contrary to certainty. That is the kind of thing I pray God gives me strength to have: that as the years move by and the decades gather, I may be like Father Abraham, who did not “stagger at the promise of God,” but believed.

[T]hings will turn out exactly as I hope they will, because the hope that I carry is not a feel good sort of thing; it is concreter than fish—it is in the God in whom there is no “shadow of turning.”

And yet—results are unimportant. I have a dream to win the Nobel Prize and I am confident that I am going to win it. It is such a little thing. But God is my “exceeding great reward.” I am learning that I don’t make art for applause from people or to have a name in the world; I make art because the Father has called me to do that. It is from Him that I expect commendation and reward. If awards come, if critical applause comes, if money or fame comes—these are but “things added.” 🔷