A Kind of Quest that Never Ends: In Conversation with Uche Nduka

DCW: I don’t know if you have ever seen Nardwuar’s interviews, but he always leads with this question, which I think is an important one: Who are you?

UN: I am a nomadic living archive. I am not willing to entirely concede to things and rituals that overtake us as human beings. Overcoming limits is part of what a poet does. I aspire to be true to my emotional intensity and personal sensibility while writing. To be aware, to be attentive, to be a positive force in the world. I am committed to living practical poetry.

DCW: Living in Public, your 10th volume of poetry, was released in July of 2018. Having been a little more than a year since it’s been out, how has the reception been? What are your feelings about it now?

UN: That’s my 12^th volume of poems. The book is now out in the world and getting into the hands of those that need it. The batch with the Small Press Distribution (SPD) outlet is sold out. Some bookshops still stock the book. Copies are available in libraries too. I am happy about that. I wrote the poems in that book in quick succession. The voices in the book are anti-assimilationist in stances. Wordstrokes of personal and spiritual veracity. Writing a poem makes me realize that I am interested in something or someone. I tend to think that the political does not always have to become Agitprop. My feelings about the book now? I feel I am still in a generative phase of my work rather than retrospective.

DCW: I recently finished reading eel on reef, and I feel as if I’ve just returned from a long journey. I’m wondering if you could share with us where a poem begins for you. What brings you to the poem, and how do you know whether or not you’re on to something?

UN: The beginning of a poem for me is both exciting and frustrating. I build a poem moment by moment. Mostly I know I am on to something when the process of birthing a poem underscores my allegiance to the tangential, the ecstatic, the expansive and minimal frequencies. And to chance. Yes, eel on reef (2007) was truly an artistic journey. During that phase of my work, I reclaimed the essence of freedom and translated it into poems. The factors that bring me to a poem and get it rolling are remorselessly awkward and variably manifold. A kind of quest that never ends.

DCW: One thing I admire about your work is the need to return, re-visit the work; in order to pick up something that may not have been apparent during the previous encounter. What is it about surrealism specifically which allows for a sort of ambiguity, possibility to sprout?

UN: Perhaps surrealism is a continual voyage. It’s an ongoing revelation of inner and outer selves/states. A surreal poem is partly an autonomous channel. Its efficacy derives from the freedom of the spirit and the freedom of the body. The poem is immune to literary, moral, social, nationalistic, and cultural overdetermination.

DCW: Human beings, and humanity as a whole, are very complex organisms. Your work definitely reflects those complexities. As well, you recently wrote that you were rallying against conservatism in contemporary Nigerian poetry. Do you wish to elaborate more about what you are aiming at? How is this campaign fairing?

UN: Calling it a campaign was just speaking tongue in cheek. But nevertheless, I am very bored with poems that are overweaponized. Poems don’t always ask questions and they don’t always give answers. Poetry is not a mirror. Poems invite us to see and feel the world through new ways. I am against conservative poetry everywhere, not only in Nigeria. I oppose a singular approach to poetry. I don’t support generalizations. There is no barrier or boundary in poetry that I don’t want to cross. I don’t care for poetry that venerates classist social and political conventions. I love scandalous poems! And I need to state that so far there is not enough debauchery /eroticism in contemporary Nigerian poetry. The literary canon ought to be elastic.

DCW: Thinking now of the fact there are many artists, writers, thinkers whose work did not gain traction among the masses until after their deaths: Van Gogh comes to mind, as does Basquiat, among others. Why do you think this is the case? Why are societies, as a whole, so impaired in recognizing the greatness of the artists who walk & work among them?

UN: Most societies spawn zombies. That’s why. Most people prefer the familiar, the routine, the tame, the comfortable, the predictable, the agreeable. Daring is anathema to the status quo.

DCW: In a recent interview with Paul DeRienzo, you spoke about performing poetry, and how the poet and the audience come together to make the moment happen. How it’s a two-way street. What about the relationship with the solitary reader? Do you see any similarities and/or differences in how the moment is made between poet and reader, as opposed to poet and audience?

UN: I really don’t separate the page and the stage. In each of those spaces, engagement is indispensable. Even with a large audience in a hall or club or bookstore or stadium, I aim to speak individually to each person. To communicate one-to-one. I believe in the earthy and the transcendent power of poetry. Thus my relationship with the solitary reader is based on sharing and exploration too. A nourishing mutuality. This relationship is very active because a poem is changing (in motion) while you are reading it or listening to it being read. I hope that nothing I said here limits what my poetry is trying to do.

DCW: Thank you for your time, Uche. I really appreciate it. Is there anything else you would like the people to know?

UN: Thank you for your curiosity! My new volume of poems titled FACING YOU will be published in Spring 2020 by City Lights Publishers in San Francisco.

Uche Nduka is a Nigerian-American poet, essayist, collagist. He is the author of twelve volumes of poems of which the most recent is titled LIVING IN PUBLIC(2018). Some of his writing has been translated into German, Dutch, Finnish, Italian, Arabic, Spanish, Serbo-Croat, French. A 2017 NYFA Poetry Fellow, he presently lives and teaches in New York City.

Two Poems by Kara Goughnour

Bravery Test

My head is a bursting

hydrangea bloom,

a buoyant floral beach ball

browned with death and autumn.

Every moment of this life

is a bravery test,

my brain begging for deflation

while I keep breathing in bright air.

I Will Never be Satisfied Dreaming of Myself as a Bird

But these days train rides have felt like flying.

White doves of fleeting graffiti sweep by,

newspaper-flung over grass and brick

like propaganda dropped from blimp. The word Love hangs

over the corpse of an oak like a limp, blue shoelace.

There are some things that hold their beauty in impermanence.

There are some words that are that important.

A friend tells me there’s some good in propaganda.

I say all art is propaganda if you take art seriously enough.

This week I’ve been named both wanted and page-filler,

and I want to be honored by both,

but I think honor is an extension of happiness,

or at least acceptance, and I think I’m still fighting it all,

sore bones, twenty-three years and old as the world.

A mother tells me that, in moments

her children brave too close toward the edge

of a cliff, she herself feels the vertigo.

Today, almost ten years later but still thinking of my mother’s

carpal tunnel surgery, I have shooting pains

in my hands. There is still growth here;

I can not yet sit backwards in a moving train.

I cannot read or write without feeling dizzy.

But, each night, I check the train times,

and each day I try again to cut the grounding ties.

Kara Goughnour is a queer writer and documentarian living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They received their Bachelor’s Degree in Creative and Professional Writing from The University of Pittsburgh. They are the author of "Mixed Tapes," forthcoming in the Ghost City Press Summer 2019 Micro-Chap Series. They are the recipient of the 2018 Gerald Stern Poetry Award, and have work published or forthcoming in The Bitchin' Kitsch, Third Point Press, and over thirty-five others. Follow them on Twitter @kara_goughnour or read their collected and exclusive works at karagoughnour.com.   

Two Poems by F. J. Bergmann

Fugitives

An immense eye was looking for us,

but we hid among stars, in a nebula of red dust.

When that gaze swept over us, we were just rocks.

Once we could unfold again, we grazed on the green

sky. The clouds brightened over a glittering mass

of excitement. Once the light had done its work,

filaments bored downward to their doom.

In a pale lake, black basalt columns reflected

below gray messengers swarming through

purple firmament above fluted cliffs upon cliffs,

under a melting moon. That sky made us

hungrier than ever, and then we had to hide

from the eye again. We were getting tired

of mountains, but at least the sky was pink

for a short time, before it became ridiculously

orange. We have hidden too well. We can’t

find ourselves anymore.

Precursors

We’d heard that painting our house blue

would repel them, but we could only

afford to paint the doors and window frames.

They came in under the eaves.

We woke in absolute darkness, choking.

They were sucking the air out of the rooms.

They said we wouldn’t need it anymore,

where we were going.

They sat on our chests, staring into our eyes,

and held us pinned to our beds, immobile,

until we couldn’t help falling asleep again.

We had nightmares.

When we woke, they were going through

our closets and drawers, packing whatever

we would need: belts, thimbles, skewers.

We ate breakfast in a hurry.

All the essentials were put in grocery bags

and boxes, piled high in the living room.

They wouldn’t let us go to the bathroom;

they said there was no time.

We asked them to wait for our parents

and friends. But out the window we saw

the doors of every house standing open.

The streets were deserted.

We heard what sounded like roaring

from a long way off. The earth shook;

we began to tremble and pixellate.

Our lips dissolved last.

F. J. Bergmann edits poetry for Mobius: The Journal of Social Change and imagines tragedies on or near exoplanets. Work appears irregularly in Abyss & Apex, Analog, Asimov's, and elsewhere in the alphabet. A Catalogue of the Further Suns won the 2017 Gold Line Press poetry chapbook contest and the 2018 SFPA Elgin Chapbook Award.

Two Poems by Sam Silva

MENTAL MUSIC

The brain floats away

on flute and guitar jazz riffs.

Summer stillness wafts!

Keep being mindful

of the egg in your skull case!

Beautiful thoughts hang!

Do not be fooled then!,

Summer is a distraction.

Dishes lie unwashed.

ARIZONA

Those pagan sprites of legend

once fleshly and alive

in their pure passion

full of the fornication of the sky

with muddy clay creation.

Now they lie down dead

or worse than dead

in a Hell made for angels

and those of us with a spark

have fallowed them also

down to ash

and wind-blown dust!

Sam Silva has published at least 150 poems in print magazines, including Sow's Ear, The ECU Rebel, Pembroke magazine, Samisdat, St. Andrew's Review, Charlotte Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, and many more. Has published at least 300 poems in online journals including Jack Magazine, Comrades, Megaera, Poetry Super Highway, physik garden, Ken again, -30-, Fairfield Review, Foliate oak, and dozens of others. Three legitimate small presses have published chapbooks of his, three of those presses have nominated work of his for Pushcart a total of 7 times. He now has many books and chapbooks available at most major online bookstores and his spoken word poetry is available at the major digital markets such as Apple iTunes.

Two Poems by Laurie Koensgen

Corporeal

I know that is the moon

and not your lambent absence

but you’re everywhere tonight.

You’re reclining in this room.

You’re the loom on which my senses

weave their synesthesia.

You’re a figment of my body.

You enfold me like a sun-

spun shawl that no one sees.

They only feel the warmth

that radiates, from you,

through me.

Laurie Koensgen’s poems have appeared in Literary Review of Canada, Arc Poetry Magazine, In/Words, Barren Magazine, Juniper: A Poetry Journal, Ottawater, Burning House Press, Kissing Dynamite, and elsewhere. She was shortlisted for The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Award for Poetry 2018 and received the Honourable Mention in Arc’s 2018 Diana Brebner Prize. Laurie is a founding member of Ottawa’s Ruby Tuesdays poetry collective.