Sola Osofisan
09-05-2009, 07:15 PM
By Jim Pressman
Detail is the key word for Adrian Igonibo, son of a Jamaican-Nigerian veteran journalist and crack photographer, Lindsay Barrett. He does pay a lot of attention to it, and repeatedly recommends same to every aspiring or practicing member of the Compulsive Scribblers' Tribe to which all writers/story-tellers belong.
He made that point in the first three sentences, as he opened the second Creative Writers' Workshop at the Golden Gate Hotel, Wuse Zone 5 Abuja Saturday June 27, 2009. I could not wait to grab a copy of his debut collection of short stories on display at the venue of the seminar, which comes under the aegis of one - year - old Abuja Writers' Forum, founded by Dr. Emman Usman Shehu, Director of the International Institute of Journalism (IIJ), Abuja, who insists that a Writers' Forum must be practical. Shehu had heard Igonibo's name for the first time some four years ago when the young man's short story 'The Phoenix' won the 2005 edition of the British Broadcasting Corporation World Service short story competition.
I looked at the blurb of FROM CAVES OF ROTTEN TEETH (Port Harcourt, Daylight Media Services Limited, 2005 - pp. 155) and the first word that hits me in the face is detail: "These fourteen stories are extraordinary in their impact. Although they may seem surreal, every Nigerian (indeed African) will recognise the truthfulness and realism with which they reflect the day - to - day modern African existence. The author has an uncanny eye for detail and a deadly accurate, though sometimes satirical ear." The blurb says, in part.
Three young fellow Nigerian writers have quite interesting things to say about Igonibo's work. Uzodinma Iweala writes: "In this collection, Barrett entrances the reader with his lush language and imagery (which bring) the essence of struggle alive… the effect on the reader's imagination will last for a very long time…"
For award-winning Kaine Agary, debut-author of Yellow Yellow, "Igoni Barrett's prose captures, with enviable depth, the emotions and circumstances of his characters… from addiction to everyday survival, these stories are delivered with sincerity." The third comment is from Chika Unigwe who states that the stories "share the same beauty of language, the same keen sense of observation" and that "reading the collection is a journey into a world sometimes humorous, but very often a reminder of all that is wrong in ourworld
Another point the young Barrett stressed was a quote from Thomas Mann: "A writer is a man for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." Yet he (Igoni) added, "I did not got to learn this thing (writing); I taught myself."
A short conversation ensued after the workshop between this reporter and Igoni Barrett the self-made writer who insists he will still farm, big - time, and reminds you of Senegalese writer and film maker Sembene Ousmane save for much higher basic education than the dockyard worker - turned - writer… EXCERPTS:How and when writing started for this Second Repulic child (born in Port Harcourt, 1979) of Nigerian-Jamaican parentage:
In February 2000 I decided to become a writer. This was not an easy, romantic decision. It had not come on me gradually, not I to it willingly. First, I was a student of agriculture. My two grandfathers from either side, and although Grandmamma would have loved her first grandson to study medicine and become a doctor, I wanted knowledge on how best to do big-time farming.
I had more importantly not written anything beyond an outer-space-themed, comic book when I think I was about nine years old, several bad poems as a teenager and two very bad plays (one at sixteen, the second in 1998 at 21).
Reading Garcia Marquez (Love in the time of Cholera) however, finally decided me.I wanted to be a writer! I wrote my first short story - longhand, on several sheets of ruled notebook paper with a blue Bic biro - in March 2002. I stapled the sheets together and then sat back to admire my creation.
Although the handwriting was okay, paragraphing, punctuation and other elements of style had been assiduously attended to, when all was said and done it looked more like a class assignment than the great work of literature Iaspired to! I had expected the product of my pen to at least look like a book.
On the Garcia Marquez influence:
It is there and was the decider for my option for writing, but nobody expected I should write exactly like Marquez. There have been others too, since I got started, such as Benard Malamud, whose stories I have read.
Why 'Black Biro' and from Imiringi?
I had tried living on a job in Lagos and it turned out so tough I decided to go back home and if I had to starve to death I could at least do so among people I know and who know me. The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) just happened to be willing to help young people venture into entrepreneurship in farming then, so I was game and the farm started.
When I ventured into putting information on the net, a friend and businessman Moukhtar observed that my editing was good, so he proposed that I come work for him on Sarafina. We entered into an agreement with him which saw me working for the magazine, though now I have just resigned and I am leaving them shortly. I still intend to farm in Imiringi, seriously. When I went to study Agric in Ibadan it was not to get a certificate to enable me work in a bank or someone else's big farm. I needed all the knowledge to do it well and had just acquired that when I quit college to do what my heart told me to do…
Adventure and the discipline required for the lonely, back-breaking job of writing
Igonibo could hardly write in Lagos, due first to long hours in perpetual traffic hold-ups, and the hustle and bustle of daily existence in the country generally: he got home late and tried to write, power outage stopped him in his track, when he did not dose off with his head on the table! Now he does the bulk of his writing in the early hours of the day or at night outside the normal writer's bursts of inspiration which can hit you anywhere, anytime.
What the future holds
It is certainly "morning yet on creation day" (apologies to Prof. Chinua Achebe) as he says he will continue to write even as he does big-time farming. Are we to expect a full length novel, soon given his quite lengthy short stories including "They would be swine" (pp.137-152) about animals he says he likes a lot but which are "grossly misunderstood." He has one coming soon, though the last time that was attempted it turned out to be a long, short story, at best a novella.
“Recently I joined a group of 8 other writers on a 4-city, national reading tour to Benin, Warri, Lagos and Ibadan to boost the reading and publishing cultures in our country. It is an appalling state of things the way we lack structures for the encouragement of up-coming authors and publishing them, as well as to ensure that the general public is aware of their published works.”
People's Daily (http://www.peoplesdaily-online.com/index.php/life-style/arts-a-culture-/36-arts-a-culture-/3145-adrian-igonibo-barrett-a-new-hemingway-emerging-in-nigeria)
Detail is the key word for Adrian Igonibo, son of a Jamaican-Nigerian veteran journalist and crack photographer, Lindsay Barrett. He does pay a lot of attention to it, and repeatedly recommends same to every aspiring or practicing member of the Compulsive Scribblers' Tribe to which all writers/story-tellers belong.
He made that point in the first three sentences, as he opened the second Creative Writers' Workshop at the Golden Gate Hotel, Wuse Zone 5 Abuja Saturday June 27, 2009. I could not wait to grab a copy of his debut collection of short stories on display at the venue of the seminar, which comes under the aegis of one - year - old Abuja Writers' Forum, founded by Dr. Emman Usman Shehu, Director of the International Institute of Journalism (IIJ), Abuja, who insists that a Writers' Forum must be practical. Shehu had heard Igonibo's name for the first time some four years ago when the young man's short story 'The Phoenix' won the 2005 edition of the British Broadcasting Corporation World Service short story competition.
I looked at the blurb of FROM CAVES OF ROTTEN TEETH (Port Harcourt, Daylight Media Services Limited, 2005 - pp. 155) and the first word that hits me in the face is detail: "These fourteen stories are extraordinary in their impact. Although they may seem surreal, every Nigerian (indeed African) will recognise the truthfulness and realism with which they reflect the day - to - day modern African existence. The author has an uncanny eye for detail and a deadly accurate, though sometimes satirical ear." The blurb says, in part.
Three young fellow Nigerian writers have quite interesting things to say about Igonibo's work. Uzodinma Iweala writes: "In this collection, Barrett entrances the reader with his lush language and imagery (which bring) the essence of struggle alive… the effect on the reader's imagination will last for a very long time…"
For award-winning Kaine Agary, debut-author of Yellow Yellow, "Igoni Barrett's prose captures, with enviable depth, the emotions and circumstances of his characters… from addiction to everyday survival, these stories are delivered with sincerity." The third comment is from Chika Unigwe who states that the stories "share the same beauty of language, the same keen sense of observation" and that "reading the collection is a journey into a world sometimes humorous, but very often a reminder of all that is wrong in ourworld
Another point the young Barrett stressed was a quote from Thomas Mann: "A writer is a man for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." Yet he (Igoni) added, "I did not got to learn this thing (writing); I taught myself."
A short conversation ensued after the workshop between this reporter and Igoni Barrett the self-made writer who insists he will still farm, big - time, and reminds you of Senegalese writer and film maker Sembene Ousmane save for much higher basic education than the dockyard worker - turned - writer… EXCERPTS:How and when writing started for this Second Repulic child (born in Port Harcourt, 1979) of Nigerian-Jamaican parentage:
In February 2000 I decided to become a writer. This was not an easy, romantic decision. It had not come on me gradually, not I to it willingly. First, I was a student of agriculture. My two grandfathers from either side, and although Grandmamma would have loved her first grandson to study medicine and become a doctor, I wanted knowledge on how best to do big-time farming.
I had more importantly not written anything beyond an outer-space-themed, comic book when I think I was about nine years old, several bad poems as a teenager and two very bad plays (one at sixteen, the second in 1998 at 21).
Reading Garcia Marquez (Love in the time of Cholera) however, finally decided me.I wanted to be a writer! I wrote my first short story - longhand, on several sheets of ruled notebook paper with a blue Bic biro - in March 2002. I stapled the sheets together and then sat back to admire my creation.
Although the handwriting was okay, paragraphing, punctuation and other elements of style had been assiduously attended to, when all was said and done it looked more like a class assignment than the great work of literature Iaspired to! I had expected the product of my pen to at least look like a book.
On the Garcia Marquez influence:
It is there and was the decider for my option for writing, but nobody expected I should write exactly like Marquez. There have been others too, since I got started, such as Benard Malamud, whose stories I have read.
Why 'Black Biro' and from Imiringi?
I had tried living on a job in Lagos and it turned out so tough I decided to go back home and if I had to starve to death I could at least do so among people I know and who know me. The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) just happened to be willing to help young people venture into entrepreneurship in farming then, so I was game and the farm started.
When I ventured into putting information on the net, a friend and businessman Moukhtar observed that my editing was good, so he proposed that I come work for him on Sarafina. We entered into an agreement with him which saw me working for the magazine, though now I have just resigned and I am leaving them shortly. I still intend to farm in Imiringi, seriously. When I went to study Agric in Ibadan it was not to get a certificate to enable me work in a bank or someone else's big farm. I needed all the knowledge to do it well and had just acquired that when I quit college to do what my heart told me to do…
Adventure and the discipline required for the lonely, back-breaking job of writing
Igonibo could hardly write in Lagos, due first to long hours in perpetual traffic hold-ups, and the hustle and bustle of daily existence in the country generally: he got home late and tried to write, power outage stopped him in his track, when he did not dose off with his head on the table! Now he does the bulk of his writing in the early hours of the day or at night outside the normal writer's bursts of inspiration which can hit you anywhere, anytime.
What the future holds
It is certainly "morning yet on creation day" (apologies to Prof. Chinua Achebe) as he says he will continue to write even as he does big-time farming. Are we to expect a full length novel, soon given his quite lengthy short stories including "They would be swine" (pp.137-152) about animals he says he likes a lot but which are "grossly misunderstood." He has one coming soon, though the last time that was attempted it turned out to be a long, short story, at best a novella.
“Recently I joined a group of 8 other writers on a 4-city, national reading tour to Benin, Warri, Lagos and Ibadan to boost the reading and publishing cultures in our country. It is an appalling state of things the way we lack structures for the encouragement of up-coming authors and publishing them, as well as to ensure that the general public is aware of their published works.”
People's Daily (http://www.peoplesdaily-online.com/index.php/life-style/arts-a-culture-/36-arts-a-culture-/3145-adrian-igonibo-barrett-a-new-hemingway-emerging-in-nigeria)