The Professional Poet?

Amatoritsero Ede

Ama Is it possible, strange as it may sound in the fiercely capitalist economy of the quotidian, that there exists such a creature as a professional poet today – perhaps in certain parts of the world? Obvious as it might appear, it is nevertheless necessary to emphasise that by ‘professional poet’ reference is to those who do nothing else for a living but write poetry and live by its proceeds – which will surely be close to nothing! If this economic wonder does exist, is the professional poet not destined for the doghouse – or shall we call it pigsty, reminiscent of the prodigal son in the Bible who must steal from the pigs and eat their food? Apart from the basic necessities of subsisting in a competitive economy, it is not impossible that some poets, weaned on ‘the image’ as they are, can relish the sensuous to an extreme, be keen as sword-blades and love to live life to the scabbard-hilt; as such there has to be an absent but prospectively magnanimous father-surrogate, for whom he would be a literary ‘foundling’. Literary patronage is as old as writing itself. We can go as far back as Ancient Rome to find examples.

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Imagination’s Many Rooms

Afam Akeh in conversation with Elleke Boehmer

Ama I worked now on Nile Baby, and now on Mandela, in staggered bursts. But, as if in illustration of how narrative writing can perform and resolve questions in non-narrative writing, and vice versa, as the writing proceeded it became clear that I was working on a particular theme or issue in common, which can be summarised in the phrase: Africa, the measure of the human. As I pondered Mandela’s iconic achievement, I became increasingly more aware that at the centre of all he has done is embedded the idea that Africa is not remote from understandings of the human, as western knowledge has long portrayed it, but provides some of the central measures of humanness – where humanness is defined as reciprocity and contingency, together. ‘I am well because you are well’.