THE TITLE OF MY POEM ‘ENDSARS, LAWMAKERS OR LAWBREAKERS’, WAS COINED FROM MY ATTEMPT TO ‘SOROSOKE’ (SPEAK OUT )- PETER OLUDE SUNDAY
Olude Peter Sunday is a 21 year old Hyper-realistic Pencil Artist, Writer and Poet from Nigeria. His Poem titled “END SARS, Law Makers or Law Breakers” came third in the just concluded END SARS National Poetry Competition. In this inclusive interview with Wole Adedoyin, he shared with him some facts surrounding his writing career and his winning poem.
WA: YOUR POEM “END SARS, LAW MAKERS OR LAW BREAKERS” CAME THIRD IN THE END SARS NATIONAL POETRY CONTEST, TELL US ABOUT THE PROCESS FOR COMING UP WITH THE POEM.
OP: Thank you very much for this. Factually, I found this question unveiling the curtains of my mind. This beautiful thing all came up from the title and the title came up in form of a trance, all at once. The process was light, I mean, for someone like me, who dines among the people of this colour,(Let me say Non-Bloody Civilians) I’ve bore the sacrosanct knowledge of how black their shortcomings are to the ‘denizens’, and in no time, I found myself leaving this world and getting few opaque bloods on my palms. I even got surprised that even the poem has fine-tuned itself into a specific style, all the while I was busy immersing myself into their wicked water.
WA: CAN YOU GIVE US SOME INSIGHT INTO WHAT MAKES THE POEM SPECIAL?
OP: Wow. This question sounds neighbouring to the first, and I found out that I’ve hinted much of the answer above. To me, of my poems, this has become one of the best since I wrote it. I found out I had evoke so much poetic charms, foresights and panache that took after intense imageries, like “the shadows of the innocent ones hurrying home before their bodies”. The style that birthed the first and second stanza whole, has attested to mean something in the deepness of writing & being detached from it, before looking back at your whole piece, like an artist painting & shifting back to check his work of art after an hour.
WA: HOW DID YOU BECOME INVOLVED WITH THE SUBJECT OR THEME OF YOUR POEM?
OP: Like I earlier said, I dine among the people of this colour, so it came like this contest emerged to unbolt a nut inside of me. So I fitted myself in their shoes, “SARS Shoes”, and I began with what lives in their mind that pushed them into the bad hunting of men, “I am the tickling talks of the town/ black bullets on the lips of gory guns”. And of their shortcomings that had dawn into my eyes, I say, “I sting the groups I guide/ and vaunt the voice of virtuous denizens into rotten reverberations”.
WA: WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO WRITE IN YOUR PARTICULAR FIELD OR GENRE?
OP: If this is to mean poetry, I actually write on the other few genres, prose to be exact. On prose, my tummy is a curly one, filled with plots both smooth and Medias res. Perchance, because I’m an introvert, the man who sits back and watch people, watch boys, watch girls, watch man and watch woman display their natures silently or loudly. I mean my nature of reading/studying people plus tiny things daily has filled me with so much experience that my Non-fictions come out earthy, I mean, LIFE and even my Non-fictions; so I have found the prose genre raw. On the other side of poetry, “I found myself tossing into a smoke without flesh”. When I refuse to write a poem that pleads to be out there, I bore the feelings of a WANTED soul.
WA: HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WRITING?
OP: I started writing since I was a kid, apparently 15 years ago, but I’d say it began 7 years ago, because seriously, I could say that even my literary sister, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie now has only her fresh manuscripts in town.
WA: WHAT KIND(S) OF WRITING DO YOU DO?
OP: On the few genres that I write, I write Fictitive and Non-fictitive stories plus fantasy and horror. I actually write Drama too, (unpublished). Like in the Caffeinated Anthology I was, I write poems to live.
WA: IS WRITING YOUR FULL-TIME CAREER? OR WOULD YOU LIKE IT TO BE?
OP: Writing is not my full time career, I’m a typist lining at the back of Felicity in ‘Arrow’, an Hyper-realistic pencil artist talented in High resolution Pencil Portrait plus Painting (House painting, Human painting, Landscape painting, nature painting, Photoshop painting and other paintings), a graphics designer, lyrics video maker, Cartoonist and everything art. However, writing has risen to shroud the better-half of my career.
WA: ON A TYPICAL DAY, HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU SPEND WRITING?
OP: I spend the least of 3 hours on writing on a typical day.
WA: WRITING CAN BE AN EMOTIONALLY DRAINING AND STRESSFUL PURSUIT. ANY TIPS FOR ASPIRING WRITERS?
OP: I would advice my fellow writers to get drenched in the draining, only that could make them dry. The emotions that arise with writing are what complete that story we are writing. Many times, a writer would always feel the pain first before the readers. I sometimes have to step out of my office for some minutes to gift myself a break to grieve over losing a character and the problems that ensues. It calls for a time to practice creative self-care, to give yourself a time to work on your feelings and sigh out loud. So, to lose the big emotional weight, let the winds bear of it. Go look at the vulture for a while and the flying bird before dashing back on that story or piece of poem. It doesn’t get you detached, the plots are inside of you. We have to acknowledge that we sometimes bear the burdens of the people or characters we care to tell their stories. So, at times, a Physiotherapist needs to go through a therapy to control the emotional weight of his/her work. The beauty in bearing all the feelings meant that your story is significant to so much realism and to individuals imbibing, impactful.
WA: HOW DO YOU HANDLE LITERARY CRITICISM?
OP: Of all my years in writing, I’ve only come across one, and here is how I handle it. I sat back and sipped a drink, decided to bounce back and use it in improving my craft. Because I had come to understand that even though criticism could sometimes be critical, harsh or negative, it is just one person’s opinion. If you let criticism embalm or you overwhelm yourself with it, it might wound your literary idea. So shifting back and sipping a drink is an idea of detaching yourself from the critique. Laura van den Berg says, “A bad review hurts, no doubt, but I try to remember that even though negative criticism can, at times, make me feel small and wounded and afraid, it will only paralyze me if I let it.” Another thing I do is that I ascertain whether the criticism is useful depending on where it’s coming from. Is it coming from an experienced editor giving me feedbacks on how to improve my craft? Or from a casual reader? These questions make it necessary to be wary of critiques that are too specific, makes it cautioning to self-impulse, of things to be taken and not be taken on board. Neil Gaiman once said, “remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”
WA: WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR INSPIRATION?
OP: Thank you for this question. Much of my inspirations come from books. Reading is always meant to be the best part of a writer. My favourite fictitive writer is ‘Harlan Coben’, however much of my inspiration on the genre of poetry is drawn from this space, drawn from “THE UNSERIOUS COLLECTIVE”. Their works are as catchy as Justin Bieber’s ‘As long as you love me’.
WA: WHERE CAN READERS FIND OUT MORE ABOUT YOU AND YOUR WORKS?
OP: Many of my works has found its space online while others are forthcoming. Readers can track them on Caffeinated Journal Anthology, Hayden’s Ferry review, Kalahari Review, Erogospel magazine, African writers, Parousia magazine, Poemify, Madswirl Magazine and Eskimo pie for a few.
WA: WHAT WAS THE INSPIRATION FOR YOUR POEM?
OP: The inspiration for this piece was online. Online was filled with too much happenings at the time of the End sars protest, that even when the protest is on its high-key, Police brutality still ensues, as they spilled hot water on ‘virtuous denizens’ and ‘gash bruises on the skins of their sheep’ at Abuja. Another key inspiration came from a Tweet of ‘Adedayo Adeyemi Agarau’, where dim-witted questions thrown at him from a personnel of the SARS were followed by a fiendish smack. It was drawn from their perpetual action that beckons before the protest, “for like goliath’s fall: 1i have proven to be”.
WA: WHAT IS THE KEY THEME AND/OR MESSAGE IN THE POEM?
OP: Thank you. Permit me to link the messages in this poem with an art I drew and its forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry online and print issue of the Arizona State University, which would be out by March. Grab your copy and experiment to get the full messages has hidden in the art.
WA: WHAT DO YOU HOPE YOUR READERS TAKE AWAY FROM THIS POEM?
OP: I would like my readers to take these lines to their left palms. “for if my brutal bones be mixed with mercy/i will exploit thousand livers and lives alive/& even fly far to hunt the peace of the souls i have slain”, so whenever or what century or decade voices like this so arise again to tamper their rights or peace of existence, they’d be of good courage and rise, into another peaceful protesters, and save our land from wolves ‘in fine suits, to secure'
WA: WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TITLE?
OP: The title of my Poem ‘Endsars, lawmakers or lawbreakers’, is coined from my attempt to ‘sorosoke’ and also pitch high the voices of bawling victims and citizens of Nigeria, that has been swallowed or not by this Squad of the Police Force.
WA: WHAT WERE THE KEY CHALLENGES YOU FACED WHEN WRITING THIS POEM?
OP: Firstly, the key challenges I face was on the first and second stanzas of this poem. I found out that the second stanza is buying the style of the first, so I had to pause the third stanza and revisits the duo to polish them into a twin, and lastly, swimming towards the end of the poem’s shore, I began having bloods on my palms like a delinquent SARS Personnel due to the first persona style I’ve used in developing the poem, so, I had to dash out of my office for two minutes or more, breathe out, and come back hunting as a peaceful protester.
WA: WHAT DO YOU LIKE TO DO WHEN YOU ARE NOT WRITING?
OP: This is a very thrilling question to me. When I’m not putting a pen on paper, I’d either be drawing a human figure in a realistic form, tending the frame of a finished portrait, painting a commissioned human picture in Photoshop, composing a Pop song, researching on putting more effect on a face in pencil drawing, streaming and tending to messages on Instagram, creating a lyrics video, I could be designing a flyer or switching from Rema to Brymo’s song. To be exact, when I’m not in the writing of art, I dash into other arts.
WA: WHO IS YOUR FAVOURITE AUTHOR AND WHY?
OP: My favourite author is ‘Harlan Coben’, one of the best New York Writers/Novelist. Why? That guy creates too much of overconfident plots and terrific scenes. He coils his whole themes into real-images that speaks the truth throughout his books, and has this style that suits my ink. His works are hard to criticize.
WA: WHAT BOOKS OR AUTHORS HAVE MOST INFLUENCED YOUR OWN WRITING?
OP: His books, Wole Soyinka’s, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s, read “LUCKY YOU” and more of Chapbooks from “THE UNSERIOUS COLLECTIVE”.
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