Aremu Adams Adebisi, whose poem ‘Force Mechanism’ is published in the fourth issue of Lucent Dreaming, is a Nigerian writer, economist and religionist. He is Kwaran, grew up in Lagos and started scrawling poetry precisely six years ago on his skin. He is a recipient of the Green Authors Prize with works in Best New African Poets and the anthology of Contemporary African Poetry. His other works most recently appeared in Thirdwednesday Magazine, Barren Magazine, Terse Journal and Brittlepaper. When he is not writing, he can be found fumbling with the market curves.
So, what inspired your piece ‘Force Mechanism’ and how did it find its way to Lucent Dreaming?
I was in front of the house one day when everything happened fast— a boy exerting such force on a stone he intended to pelt on another boy until his hand had to swing backward, so backward that when he finally hurled the stone, the whole of his body jerked forward and he fell flat facedown. There right away the first thought came to me— that force is an autodidact; we don’t teach or learn it. It comes naturally to us. When people say a girl is raped in the woods or that an immigrant is banished from a land and then decide to create an awareness for it, I feel these are things people already know are wrong, but still allowed the forces in wrongness to overwhelm them. Everything from a word, to a sentence and then to a paragraph establishes the mechanism of force. And it manifests itself in many ways— hormones, adrenaline, power, authority, dream, robotics, humanity, global warming, etc. Unless we recognise the wrong forces and their effects on other people, unless we know that things can be done rightly in simplicity and still do not oversimplify, we’ll always fall flat facedown as a society, like the boy in his efforts to determine force. So when I saw Lucent Dreaming and I had written this piece on force, I knew right then this would be the home for it. There were indicators— the piece met a certain prompt given by the magazine and it fitted into its dreams. But in order not to force my expectations, I wedged between optimism and pessimism.
What writing/creative projects are you currently working on?
Being a finalist in a university has not allowed me to engage in many creative projects. However, I am currently developing ways on how to work out an African magazine that’d be accepted by the world, alongside a friend named Abdul-Quadri. We initially initiated one and it died on arrival because we were not thoughtful enough that the selected name has already been chosen by another magazine. Now we’ve come up with Elartinia Magazine and hope it would see the daylight. Also I am curating ARTmosterrific with many other brilliant minds. It is a literary community that gives critiques and shares literary incentives to young and budding writers and readers alike. The government does not do this for us, so we do it ourselves in the little ways we can. Additionally, I just started writing a manuscript on an extinct African poetry genre— the conversational kind of. The manuscript was hinted by Ehoran Elizabeth. She urges me on and I am very appreciative.
What are you most excited about right now and for the future?
I am not excited about many things, except that all my submissions should be accepted by the different magazines I submitted them to and open new challenges for me, and also that I should graduate university this year. I however get excited with the prospect of Elartinia Magazine. I persuade myself each time that it will grow into an amazing magazine with the right concerted commitment. I’ve always wanted to edit a new magazine or contribute in every way I can to the growth of an established one.
How and where do you find inspiration to do your craft?
I draw heavy inspiration from solitude and the natural vastness within. From a gust of wind coursing through my face, from the vastness of people and water, to the vastness of pain and sorrows and happiness— all punctuated by solitude. I tend to write more in an ambience where everything is silent but the natural surges of physical and abstract causatives. This preys on my mind and initiates a thinking.
What advice would you give those who want to do what you do?
It is not uncommon that the young poet rummages through dictionaries for new words. We’ve been made to believe that poetry hinges heavily on diction. When we submit to journals and they characteristically do not accept, we take the brunt upon our diction. So we start reading, seeking more PDFs, jotting words down and favouriting some. In fact we are so bent on improving our diction that we undertake a poetic hiatus. We are not to write poetry until our diction has substantially improved. However, this is all wrong. Both stages of unlearning and relearning require writing. To relearn is to want to unlearn. We can’t relearn without losing substances in the process. But when we write and keep doing, it helps to balance what we have known and what we will know. This will help our diction and subsequently our poetry. I should also add that diction does not make poetry, but coherence. A poem with incoherent diction is nothing but a stone to a golden piece of simple coherent words. But when we don’t understand this dictionary of poems, we take them to mean ‘professional’.
Where can people see more of you and your work?
I have works recently published in Thimblelitmag, Turnpikezine, Barren Magazine, Peeking Cat Poetry, Terse Journal, Rockvale Review, Brittlepaper, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere. I have others forthcoming in Third Wednesday Magazine, The Account Magazine, Cathexis Northwest Press, and elsewhere. I am working on the creation of a Weebly website where all my works and the links to them can be found. I share a few poems however and stuffs about my life on my Twitter timeline via (@aremudamsbisi) and my Facebook timeline with the name (Aremu Adams Adebisi). I have a mini chap published with WRR and it’s titled Transcendence. You can get it through my mail dhadarms@gmail.com.