Pantechnicon; Ifeanyi Menkiti

Go to special people. How long have you been in this country. Well I've been in the country for more than 10 years. I was in California and then in New York. What part of Africa are you from. I was born in Nigeria Nigeria right. Does. Africa play a great deal of part in the poetry that you write I suppose it does. Yes I will I will say so because some of this stuff kind of deals with experiences I've had in this country to you know those African part of America. When did you start writing poetry. About 15 years ago

what started all that. I really can't put my finger on any one thing. I did a. Lot of things I guess you know maybe some specific experiences. Sometimes I think poetry has an organic function there are some experiences you have in your you it kind of hits you in the back of the head and you've got to get it out so soon that as long as people keep having experiences they're going to keep writing poetry and you decided on poetry then instead of prose to say what you want to say. Well I don't really know whether it's a question of a conscious decision is this things kind of happen. You know one finds one's voice in a particular medium I guess. What do you write about mostly in literature that is specifically African. I guess I do.

I write about collective struggle for self respect for self esteem given the history of Africa and the humiliation that came with the colonial period I was in my poems mostly about people people and the struggles you know their struggles through time sadness and their fear is joys and benevolences you know not all bad and not all good. It's in the context of Africa said that there is a lot for one to worry about and write about. Given the colonial colonial intervention and psychological dislocation that came in its wake that took a couple of examples of some African literature a poem here that kind of straddles Africa and the black American experience and it's called All quiet on slavery and it was

written I guess. Because the sort of things that Johnson and shop play the IQ controversy and we've seen variations on that the embrace of a Africa and so when this whole thing blew up and India in the late 60s early 70s I wrote this poem and it's called our choir dance LIBRO. No call that waited a Negro was a man. I was somewhere between an antelope and a man. We danced on D D F America danced we're toast. Oh Sandy F America where one or a lot of joy and intermingled blessedness Jerusalem was build a deer among the dead sea Arabs came the Jews before them. But here in our time ticks out and see we wept and spied the seeds of watermelon jolly niggas come to town

and there was this that Dalt pain down deep in the sow because of wheat was left a whole lot of tears and past director blessedness we shook we shook to the rhythm of job and it was there's another point along this line called and says for already and because European poets came to Africa and they did not find any huge monuments in stone and they did not find two marks in literature to assume that people didn't have any civilization they didn't have any culture. And then it's going to be goes on trying to make about anybody in the face of the earth. So this poem is called ancestral Ray. And so rare Ferland to grow for beers shaft of amber light among the hillocks of the dead city ripe on that night about

equipping centuries and there will be yet another day one in the wilderness it in with a ghost and glow of consecrated light seen with the footfall of the pond. Hello Ron. Hello rain. Hallowed Grove so shall the flame go forth once more in Kendal tongues. So do Wando brood about base memory I raly your days within days to tell my own catalogue years reference to catalogue years at the end of the play. Question of origin is generally found in find out of a plan. You don't know black poets that are very active now in Africa. Do they get together and work and do and give play readings and poetry readings. They have a number about musicians in Nigeria and also

in East Africa. But it's very informal and they have an organized writer's group but I think most of the creative expression really comes when the informal get together. So it's fairly unusual to have poetry published in African literature African background. Well they do have some some journals they have some journals in in Nigeria for instance a number of things that. People can publish in. Well I mean you know you have your poems have appeared in the contemporary African literature. Is that located in this country or is it located. It was published by Random House. But there is a very important Johnno called transition which is what used to be published out of Kampala Uganda and then is now published out of a crowd of Ghana. And I've had a number of things and and there is not ontology

that just came out showing the Nigerian playwright editor that was published in London I have something in that one. So I don't think obviously it would be good to have many more journals but that's not a big big deal. Do you find that the content of your poetry has changed very much now that you're in the United States or are you used to writing in the same way writing in the same way about pretty much the same thing. Well. I will say that to write in about the same things I've had in new and new. Some modern new with new things you know to do and maybe this time also I find has changed because of the things I do now I don't know what one wants to see in their light. Some people say it's like I see somebody who says like how did I do.

You are now I understand the Existent One of the assistant professors of philosophy at Wellesley College. You have time to write poetry and do carry out teaching and I want to do well. It gets busy sometimes but these are my two loves you know I like oil and I like Pelosi so I find time they run their parallel. I think this time to lighten the mood of these these poems that I read may be quite different from the mood of what I've been doing more recently. Why do you then give us an example of what you asked me. Well here's some little a couple of points here. This one is called the blessed be a race of man. You know talking about how the system is the best one. Blessed be the race of man.

Blessed be the Russians who Nodier sense of comradeship the essence of peaceful coexistence. They wanted to bury the Americans bless or build the Europeans who bring civilization to backward peoples and the Word of God to them half devil half child bless the BDA Shin who have shown the wisdom of it in rites and the peacefulness abode. Though the Chinese now say war is inevitable for the triumph of the cause and their own corrupt and other collectives to bloodshed also be Americans who are very kind to animals and make trousers for their dogs and fill the lives of cats would want to die of neglect. And let it also be the Congolese who under good authority of Time magazine eat scrambled eggs. And there's this little one can also

help me God. There are pioneers so your highway is never around. And there I saw the glow ram burst amidst a matinée firmament. But let me live in my house by the side of the road and it my soul and me in peace. This one is the political to achieve its goals about foreign aid and all that is called Heart of the matter. It is the vital deprivation of the underdeveloped countries that they do not have factories for the manufacture of chewing gums. Now ground stands for Coca-Cola dispensational. And another short poem called Selma I was written at the height of the marches down in Alabama when Martin Luther King the Bull Connor and the cops you know used an electric cattle prods and people Selma

and segregated this so we gave the city the Hawk knows the gentry are about sick in the purity of essence the preservation of their putrid faction the gentry indeed the gentry. Indeed the hog nosed gentry. Poem here that's called a transformation so I have read all these things about their wild habits of all these natives over there and then you know Freud coming along and talking about the liberation of the instincts and this is called a transformation. Europe ends with their civilization. Africans confirmed in lottery luck in civilization. Then came from Lloyd and said fellow Europeans copulation might not be that bad after all. And now they talk of their new morality and of the positive assertion of

DRS but give no credit to the savages. Have we not invented luxury. Europe indeed is changing America following fast behind on all of this shall become confirmed like the black and white one riff raff of passion. Thank you very much and good luck with all your poetry teaching. Thank you. Tonight's guest on time technical Professor join us tomorrow night at 6:30. But I guess would be a man that shall rue who has written the biography of Mademoiselle Gabrielle she has collaborated on the new book American denim.