THAT is the situation that applies to me. I vehemently resist any attempt to see me as a writer in exile. I am not in exile. But I can only imagine the situation of any writer who is living in exile, such as faded memory of home, inability to be in what I would call the ebb and flow of life in any one country. But that said, it is just a question of how long a writer has been a way from home.

For a writer who has been away for a long time, that usually is the most pressing problem. There is usually that unquantifiable part of being away from home too which is nostalgia, feeling the rhythms of life such as the sounds and everything that makes more vivid a writer's imagination and hearing the voices. Where also the writer is deeply engaged, and professes a certain vision of literary and political commitment, then not being at home is like taking him out of his natural habitat like the fish out of water.

That is the situation I think I will imagine the writer in exile. But like I said, not being in exile does not make me speak with any authority or any sense of direct experience of writing from exile.

Writing at home and now away from home I feel no difference. I feel absolutely no difference. In fact, the issue is that I am in school studying and all of a sudden the notion that I am in exile started arriving. I have lived all my life in Nigeria even though I've been going in out of the country. I have not spent any period longer than six months away from Nigeria.

It was only four years ago that I went to graduate school. Now, the irony is that it was while I away that I wrote a volume of poetry, which is all entirely Nigerian. The theme is entirely Niger Delta. It is a one-poem book in a sense. One poem that is in five part coming with a four part poem which is a tribute to Ken-Saro Wiwa and the Ogoni 8, which together form my latest collection called the Oil land. It was when I was in the heart of being away that I wrote the collection.

(Ogaga reading poetry: pix by Sowore Omoyele)


By the second year, in the middle of of my Master of Fine Art in Poetry programme, that is, the third year after I got there, that was when I commenced writing the book and finished it at the end of the second year and it just came for press two months ago. Now, like I said, the theme of that book is entirely Nigeria, being entirely Niger Delta. This was while I was away.

On the other hand, my second book of poetry, which came out in 2003, can be most appropriately described as a collection of poems because the poems do not have one theme. There are poems rigidly about Nigeria and also, there are poems about other places and there are poems that just deal with no specific places but regions of minds.

In other words, my being away for four years has done absolutely nothing except for that feeling of wanting to be home again, which made me almost giddy the moment I realised I was coming home again after four years, so it has done nothing to change my literary vision or my sense of belonging. It has done nothing. My Nigerianness has not been diluted in anyway.

Actually in one of the poems in my second collection, Mandiba, there is a line there where Iwrote about the African song which I carry with me: The Nigerian song. And it praises the Nigerian song. So, I carry the Nigeria song with me everywhere and anywhere I go. I hear the voices in my head everywhere I am. That said, I am not here trying to push out the notion that when you are away for a long time from home, you don't lose something. You do lose something. If the writer keeps coming back to renew him or herself, that sense of clouding of memory will not be there or at any rate, not as dark as it will be if the writer does not come back home and just stayed away in exile. This is why I reject vehemently the notion of being in exile because exile suggests an involuntary period of stay away from home without the possibility or the option of return. Where the writer can return. I don't think is appropriate to say he or she is an exile, however long he or she has been away from home as an exile. I think it is best to describe that person as being expatriated or emigrant. I know that we can stretch the meaning of exile to include people in internal exile where there is a civil disturbance say in Jimeta and the people flee from where they have known all their lives to say Warri in Delta State, they can consider themselves in exile, but really they are internally displaced. So, I am all for the metaphoric use of exile and it certainly doesn't appear to me.

On changes in his writing

I think that will be the critics' job to point out what evolutionary changes they think have occurred in my writing. That said, my literary commitment is a humanistic one. In other words, mine sphere of vision does not end with the horizon of Nigeria. It is not circumscribed by Nigeria. It is humanistic. The title poem of my second collection, Mandiba, is not in any way Nigerian. It is a tribute to Nelson Mandela and all the heroes and heroines of the South African struggle against apartheid. That is a book I wrote and completed before I left Nigerian. It has all what you may call humanistic interest. The only changes that might be noticed are the changes in the craft. And those changes would occur in any self respecting and respectable writer's work. We are always evolving. We are honing our craft, we are always looking for new ways of expression. We are always looking for new ways of giving expression to the things that are old. And all the big themes in literature and human advent are old: corruption, love, greed, man's inhumanity to man, whatever it is, nostalgia, grieve lament they are there. We are always thinking of new ways, new forms of expression. Those are the changes that may be found in craft not so much in themes. The theme in my first collection, Homeland and other poems are the same themes you will find in succeeding two books, but given different expressions, getting their lives from a different impulse and therefore making them to trail or go along with different literary trajectory. So that's all I can say about changes. Certainly, not about being away having somehow impacted or diluted my vision and now I am writing other things and foreign medium.

State of literature in the country

It is alive. There was a time when it was a hue and cry: Flagellation and lamentation of how Nigerian literature was dead. But it remains that Nigerian literature has never been dead. The truth is that is has lacked avenue for being disseminated to the generality of the public and also, to the whole world at large. In recent times, we started seeing books being published, especially those books that were published abroad by mainstream publishers. Prizes being won, I think the trend we want to take, I mean, my generation, which has been labeled the fourth generation, right or wrong, I think that point came with Helon Habila winning the Caine prize for fiction and going on to having the book published and also, to the success that he has had so far.

By the time Chimamanda Adichie's book came out and Sefi Atta and Chris Abani, these books came out and refocused attention, locally and internationally, on Nigerian literature. But don't forget, Habila wrote his book in Nigeria. There is a Nigeria version of it which is called Prisons Love Stories. After wining the prize, the book was re-written and re-published. But if it had not gone to win the Caine Prize, and draw up the kind of attention it drew to itself, those who were lamenting the state of Nigeria literature, saying it is dead, will have all reasons in the world to think so. To me it is very much alive it is just that it lacked the avenue for mass dissemination. However, the other I am glad to know is that there has been transition from the genre of poetry as the main medium of literary expression. There was a time at any gathering of writers, whether of Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) reading or convention, poetry dominated.

Poetry seemed to be the only thing that Nigerians wrote. Maybe because it was easier to read it at meetings or gathering or easier to publish in the papers, like poetry in motion column. But what it seems to be was that everybody who nursed ambition or professed any literary ambition seems to be writing poetry and nothing else. But we have noticed a shift to fiction. Maybe because of the well-known tyranny of literary prizes to focus attention rigidly at that which is winning prizes, which is fiction.