Having been a book editor, how would you describe the literary production by young writers as regards grammar and other aspects of writing?

I left Nigeria in 1994. So I have not read much work produced in Nigeria. But I have heard and I can believe that publication packages are shoddily done sometimes, that the printer’s devil takes charge at times. I can only say that, from my experience, as a Book Editor at Spectrum Books, complete professionalism was the norm, and that there was a lot of rigour in the editing or indexing process there. I don’t know if they have maintained that standard. Professionalism should be the hallmark of any kind of publishing effort.

Based on this, would you encourage self-publishing?

I would not. I would strongly advise against self-publishing. If you have been following the sentinel journal online, I have never published any of my poetry there, positioned as I am as editor to take all liberties, I do not do it because it is unprofessional. The only time my work appeared there was when Nnorom Azuonye, the founding editor, interviewed me as guest in 2004, ever before I even knew I would be editing the journal one day. I have also not published Nnorom’s work there. And thankfully he is gracious, professional and seems to agree with my editorial discretion, even without me having to explain. Even vanity publishing is unprofessional since the normal and necessary peer-review process is truncated. I do understand that sometimes a poet has to resort to this. But he has to be a finished poet already – if he is ever pushed to such a measure. Great works have come out as self-published or vanity-published material. But this is the exception not the rule. Joyce published Ulysses first with a street side printer in Paris, I think. It is better to have gone through a peer-review process of assessment, acceptance or rejection before a book comes out. A writer who has never choked down a rejection slip will not get far, really. Rejections are part of the trade. In fact it is an honour to have been rejected. At least one had something written that could have been rejected in the first place. If you cannot write at all, you cannot get rejected at all; there would be no need for a rejection slip, abi no be so? This is important especially when the poet or writer is still going through his period of apprenticeship. So I would rather shun self-publishing of any sort. This is one of the reasons for an unnecessary proliferation of chaff in the name of being prolific.

The online poetry journal, sentinelpoetry.or.uk, which you edit, is very popular especially among African writers. Tell us about the journal; the history, mission, problems and prospects.

Nnorom Azuonye, founding, and now managing, editor would have been the best person to ask this question. But I will try to answer it as I understand our mission to be. Sentinel is a web-based literary journal of poetry and graphics registered in the UK, which I edit out of Canada. My team are in UK, and USA, with me being in Canada – one of the joys of online work. And the international spread of the editorial board replicates the international spirit of Sentinel. Its content is not geographically specific. We publish material from all over the world in a truly global spirit. Our Guest poets come from every corner of the globe. All we ask is that they be finished poet. Then we publish aspiring poets and other poets till honing their crafts. The condition of being guest poet, as I understand it, is that the poet should be a finished poet, whether with a book or without. Good case again is Chiedu Ezeanah, who I had as guest poet on Sentinel about the same time as he published a collection, and who had been writing poetry and winning literary prizes for 20 years before he saw fit to bring a book out. Now that is an example of a patient poet. Poetry is not something to be mass-produced. Sentinel was founded and set up from the pocket of Nnorom Azuonye in 2002. It is still funded from his pocket. We are just trying now to get a public funding. He has done literature a great service and sentinel has become a platform for featuring contemporary poets from all over the world and from Africa. The mission and goals are on the site to glean. But I simply say that it is globally conceived, is all inclusive and has subsidiary publications and a brick and mortar publishing arm, which release the sentinel poetry quarterly in print form. The brief of the quarterly has been enlarged but I don’t remember the details right now. Anyone interested in the history should go online and will find all necessary information including submission guidelines. There is also a sentinel poetry Bar, where aspiring poets can discuss their works and get useful critiques from fellow aspiring poets.

Do you see the internet eventually replacing the book culture?

I do not see that happening – even if you now have e-books, online poetry and sundry. There is this magic about holding a book in your hands, smelling the aroma of a newly minted text. Besides there is the inner private life and quiet a book gives to you, which a text online will never satisfy. There are even people who do not like reading on the screen and have to print the material first – either due to bad sight or the handy feeling of holding a text. Besides, you cannot write in the margins and hold a conversation with a text if it is online. Of course these days, there are technologies for probably doing that, but it is not quite the same thing. Do you know that when television appeared, the same questions were asked about the theatre? Then there was the big screen too. Did the radio stop people having conversations with each other? No! These technologies will only function alongside each other and compensate for omissions in each medium. There is also the thing about print culture that won’t die, the kind of publics it creates – the book readers clubs, perhaps informal in the case of Africa, the tea-house or coffee-shop gathering to read newspapers. In Nigeria I know sometimes it is the newsstand public space, where the issues in the newspapers or news magazines are hotly debated, argued about and pontificated upon. The internet is just one other form of, one other public space for communication.

Source: www.newnigeriannews.com