KARAN

I love how seamlessly these poems weave personal and collective history together. In “Wisdom Tooth Growing, or Against the Nature of Empires,” the emergence of a wisdom tooth is paralleled with the exploitative histories of colonial empires — “Congo, its cobalt mines tainted with the empire’s capital curse.” The individual’s pain of a growing tooth mirrors the collective suffering under imperialistic greed — “as if for the sake of glory / something must bleed, / must break.” — linking the body's natural processes to historical violence. I see similar mechanisms at play in “Elegy For My Jaundiced Heart.” I’m curious about your thoughts on the use of personal physical experiences as metaphors for historical events affecting our understanding of history’s impact on the individual?

TIMI

Thank you so much for your questions, Karan, and for appreciating the techniques I've employed in writing these poems. Many of my poems make use of this seamless weaving and layering of the personal and the political in achieving their aesthetic and emotional impact because, firstly, I often inevitably find myself writing outwards towards a shared, collective experience, and linking parts of the poems in this way is to me only a natural progression. The world is full of parables and metaphors, and writing my poetry this way feels less like crafting and more like discovery which, I'll be honest, gives me a more profound sense of joy. I believe all great poetry must escape the tether of the body which (don't get me wrong) is critical, but rarely gives a chance for the poetry to open in its entirety to readers, or to, as my friends would say when referring to poetry that embodies the greater life experience, lift. More and more these days, it is difficult to pretend that poetry isn't political. To write in response to a reality that is influenced greatly by policies and prejudices and histories and laws is to write for or against them. There is no leeway. Even poetry that does not implicitly concern itself with politics, is political in its stance and luxury to be able to afford addressing less urgent questions. I often think of Palestinian poetry, which for decades has been concerned with one and one thing only: their struggle for freedom. In this same vein, I find it difficult, having been born in a country and continent which has suffered greatly from colonial exploitation, not to concern myself with the politics, especially in a world like ours where one man's freedom is intrinsically linked to another's.

Secondly, I feel like because of how innately selfish we can be as humans (through no fault of our own), our first, most pressing demands and feelings are those of personal and bodily nature, and a personal framework, in this way, provides an entryway to deeper political and philosophical questions. In “Wisdom Tooth Growing, or Against the Nature of Empires,’’ I am writing to the question of the nature of the world and the nature of colonial empires, from events like teething and the law of wildlife to the question of human conquest, which in civilization, still mirrors the animalistic nature of lower animals.  “Elegy for My Jaundiced Heart” employs a similar approach as you have noted, though it is not entirely the same. In this poem, which I wrote for a chapbook about my identity and relationship to my country, my country takes the persona of a love interest and my melancholy appears as bile. The poem uses a less linear form as it interrogates numerous ideas from love and living to patriotism and need for transformation. I find that my identity as a Nigerian, with the burden of a brutal, bloody history and the inconvenience of a sub par present I'm constantly writing myself out of,  means I have to write simultaneously in two directions — backwards interrogating the events of history and forward reimagining a future other than the one that has been projected for me.

KARAN

The poem “Crisis” vividly portrays familial conflict, where a child's illness becomes a battleground for marital discord. The internal struggle of the child, who senses the parental tension, is juxtaposed with the external conflict of the parents — “child of promise, held to breast / even as my father, one midnight, / stormed out of the house in anger” — perhaps hinting toward how personal struggles are often influenced by external relational dynamics. The confusion between love and crisis comes to the surface. This brings to mind bell hooks’ All About Love. How often we are raised with dysfunctional ideas of love. Very often, debut books deal with our struggles with our parents. Are you working on a book that is concerned with your parents? What has urged you to work on that book? I’m inviting you to articulate how familial expectations/relations have influenced your sense of self and poetic sensibilities?

TIMI

Unfortunately, I'm not currently working on a collection about familial relations in this way. The manuscript I recently finished writing and I'm now editing is a full-length poetry collection about love and resistance, consisting of a series of linked narrative poems set in an imagined former republic. What has forced me to work on this book is the current state of our world where I've had to interrogate, over and over, the extent and limitations of love in the making of change. It is a book I hope will help us better understand the meaning of love and universal brotherhood and perhaps shock us back to life.

I wrote “Crisis” as a challenge to myself to write more personal, vulnerable poems. Though it turned out, in the end, not to be entirely biographical, I am still very proud and glad to have written it. Of course, personal struggles are often a result of external relations, and family plays an important role here as it is usually the first institution where a child learns their ideals and builds their identity. The questions and struggles of childhood are often carried into adulthood where, if you're lucky, you'll find the pain that has been repressed and begin your journey to healing. However, as I mentioned earlier, this poem is not entirely biographical and I may have greatly exaggerated its central idea to speak to realities I have witnessed indirectly. If there's one way in which my relationship with my parents and siblings have influenced my sense of self and poetic sensibilities, it is their unwavering support which continuously affirms to me their belief in my potential and has encouraged me to work harder and strive for growth in my craft, ever since when I was just a seven year old boy writing stories in old school notebooks.

KARAN

Alongside poems of pain and melancholy, these poems are about transformation and growth. In “Someday, Moon, Like You, I, Too,” the speaker dreams of transformation — envisioning a future where they “will steal the sun's glow and shine — / gold on melanin like a saint's halo.” This poetic vision of self-actualization, this desire to move from obscurity to recognition, is full of hope. Is there a part of you that believes that having written this poem, you have done something akin to shining? Is writing poetry a way for you to move toward an ideal self? What is so transformational about poetry?

TIMI

“Someday, Moon, Like You, I, Too” is a playful poem I wrote in 2021 in the tradition of poets like Billy Collins and Chen Chen to make use of a whimsical sense of humor in the making of meaning. It is another poem I wrote for the chapbook manuscript I mentioned earlier about identity and country. For many Nigerians like myself, the dream is one of recognition and a better life. In this poem, employing the allegory of the moon,  I am writing to this future with certainty and conviction. Another layer of this poem is the more direct reading of it. It's funny to me how gullible I used to be but throughout my secondary school days, I must have been told I wasn't handsome or good-looking enough that I actually started to believe it. Also, I used to wonder what prompted acts of racism against people with darker skins like mine as if the fault laid anywhere else but the heart filled with prejudice. In this poem, however, I'm not entertaining these thoughts and opinions but instead reaffirming to myself the growth that time will bring.

To answer your question about if I think writing this poem, I've done something akin to shining, the answer is, definitely. Writing this poem is perhaps the greatest embodiment of the idea of the poem itself. Like the moon stealing the sun's glow and shining, I have taken what I want from the world and announced this act, to everyone, but most importantly, to myself. Years before the light of a star reaches the earth, it first feels the gasses burning at its core.

I start most of my poems to relieve my heart of a burden, to understand what seems like endless knots of questions, to make something akin to beauty from a deep-seated pain but often on finishing these poems, I realize I have not only done all that, but also irrevocably pushed myself onto a more clearer path which is equal parts scary and thrilling. The question of what is transformational about poetry is one many poets and writers have attempted and written pages after pages of essays on. But if I'm to answer in a few words, I'll say is poetry's ability to get past the facade of the body to the inner self like a pebble which thrown with enough force through a chink in a body armour is capable of serious damage.

KARAN

I love the anger of “Bright Red World” that begins in sadness but ends in rage. I love the intensity here, especially for the way it snowballs. “Who here / has made a whorehouse / of their pain? Who here has made / the pomegranate jealous / at how much red he can make?” You’re expressing emotional and physical pain, intertwining it with familial expectations and personal defiance (and even despair). Violence, both literal and metaphorical, too, is prominent in this poem. How do you put together the harshness of this voice with the vulnerability of the speaker?

TIMI

“Bright Red World” is one of my favorite poems that I've written. I joked to my writer friends after writing it that I’ve channelled “my inner Ocean Vuong.” In the poem, the speaker recalls his father saying no son of his runs from a fight and disagreeing with himself as evidence, showing his “weakness” and pain line after line. Poet and speaker here may not altogether be the same though. I fought a lot in my six secondary school years at a boarding college. I rarely ran from fights, even ones I knew I would lose. I put myself in line for everything I knew was a just cause. But there were times when I began to feel the sensible thing to do was escaping the situations, only to feel like a coward after. Left to me, every altercation would end in a hug. I do not like violence (though, again, I see nothing wrong in dying for a just cause). But the world does not work like that, and I've had to contend with all the pain and disappointment, with writing as the only way I've achieved some semblance of power. I am channeling all the pain and frustration into this poem, as catharsis and also to take control. The harshness and vulnerability of the voice in the poem was me trying to express raw, undiluted pain on the page.

KARAN

I love the lyricism of “It's Been a Long Time Since God” — it’s reminiscent of Kaveh Akbar. “Again and again, God / touches the rotten fruit of my body and nothing blooms.” There’s so much despair here. You’re exploring themes of disillusionment and identity through spiritual and existential lenses. I like how the poem critiques both divine and self-expectations. And I love that ending too — “What, O Lord, have we made of our / mooring; of that blessed tether of the head / that now won't drop in worship?” Despite feeling abandoned by divine help, the speaker maintains, or tries to maintain, their dignity. I see a lot of tussling with the idea of God in your poems — what are your spiritual leanings, and how do they influence your poetics?

TIMI

Kaveh Akbar is one of my favorite poets and having you liken part of my work to his makes me feel so honored. I am a Muslim and my religious belief is one of the central parts of my identity. “It's Been a Long Time Since God” was written at a time when my academic and personal obligations were taking a toll on my spiritual life, as a way to express my disappointment in myself and remind myself to return to being active in my worship. I try to capture the experience of worship and the void left in its absence and to interrogate the workings of a world where the desires of the self is positioned above its needs. I enjoy reading religious poets whether Muslim poets like Sarah Ghazal Ali and Kaveh Akbar, or poets of other faiths like Pamilerin Jacob, Claire Schwartz or Michael Akuchie, because belief opens a deeper layer in the working of their poems; God appears as not just an idea, but a real, tangible thing.

KARAN

“Sisyphus” reinterprets the myth to explore personal identity beyond traditional narratives of futility. By recasting Sisyphus as at peace with his burden, the poem discusses identity in terms of acceptance and personal reconciliation with one's fate. I see a lot of resilience here, and it is portrayed as a form of resistance against existential despair. What are your thoughts on the role of personal agency in facing adversities (political, cultural, financial) that are often beyond individuals?

TIMI

I'm glad that you mentioned this. Mythmaking is one of the techniques of writing I enjoy a lot. I've found that the invention and reinvention of myths is a powerful tool that allows you to speak truth to power and speak against what is established. When possible I try to write and reinterpret myths in my poems. As you've noted earlier, I blend personal and political experiences in my poems. “Sisyphus” employs this technique, arising out of my need to interrogate the conflict between base desires, whether sex or vengeance, with the more complete feeling of love and mutual acceptance. In the poem, I explore how, as humans, for us, change in any form begins first in the mind. The role of personal agency in dealing with external challenges beyond one's control is a very critical one. Regardless of what those challenges may be and the difficulty of the work, it is one we must undertake with resilience, together. Action to change, for better, what we have no direct control over, is what gives our work meaning. In order to do proper work, one has to act against an opposing force.

KARAN

These poems are so rich in their philosophical inquiry. “Wisdom Tooth Growing, or Against the Nature of Empires” engages in a philosophical inquiry into the nature of pain and glory, questioning, inviting readers to contemplate the moral dimensions of pain and growth, whether suffering is a necessary path to wisdom. There’s a school of poetry that believes a poem or a poet can categorize their work in one of these four ways: poetry of the body, poetry of the mind, poetry of the heart, poetry of the soul. Where would you put yourself? And do you see yourself moving elsewhere?

TIMI

I think this is a very cool concept. I'm thinking of some of my favorite poems under these categories now and how I can adapt the techniques of these various categories. However, I've discovered about my poetry that it is incredibly difficult, even for me, to categorize. I write about various themes and subjects that interest me from sex to revolution to faith to grief. I experiment and adapt different styles and forms and techniques and may actually be writing across these categories or making a blend of them. I would like to give you a more definite answer though, so allow me to invert the question. If there's one of the four categories I believe my poetry would be less suited to, it would be the “poetry of the body,” because I find that in my poetry I'm constantly trying to reach past the ephemeral body to the rich, inner self.

KARAN

Thank you, Timi! Finally, we would love to know poets who have influenced you most!

TIMI

I'm an optimistic reader. I feel like I've learned something from almost every poet I've read. However to mention poets whose expertise and techniques have sunk their teeth deep into my poetry, and whose books and bodies of work I often find myself substituting for craft books, I would say: Ilya Kaminsky, Claire Schwartz, Desiree C. Bailey, Kaveh Akbar, Jericho Brown, Diane Seuss, Leila Chatti and Katie Farris.