Where do you consider home and why?

Home is many things, many places to me, but for now home is London mostly because it’s the place I’ve spent most of my life and where I regularly go to sleep.

List three words or phrases that come to mind when you think of home.

Comfort, peace, plurality.

Have you ever been homesick? Tell us the circumstances and how it felt.

When I was eleven years old, my parents sent me to boarding school in Nigeria and I was desperately homesick, wanting to return to the States, to return home.

What is your opinion about brain-drain?

I think the topic of ‘brain drain’ is nuanced and multifaceted, inasmuch as it is technical (we can consider its impact on economies, and policy implications) and practical, affecting the lived reality of people dealing with the conditions that encourage ‘brain drain’. When we think about the impact brain drain has on Africa, or more specifically, Nigeria, I think we’re looking at a phenomenon that is fundamentally reshaping the future of our cities, culture and even our identity, in addition to the more obvious points about opportunity and economic growth. It touches almost every aspect of society.

In what way does your physical location impact your creative output?

My location often defines my productivity and my ability to focus, even though it probably (definitely) shouldn’t. Some places lend themselves to focus and thinking, where my brain is primed to ‘work’, while in other places I have to make more of an effort.

What is your preferred mode of travel and why?

When time is of no consequence, I love a road trip: the mix of adventure and agenda, knowing and not knowing; the possibility to retreat and explore. With the right car and travel companion, I think road trips offer a means of experiencing all the best of what ‘travel’ can offer. 

In her debut collection of poems Home Coming, Sonia Sanchez’s writes:

“i have returned \\ leaving behind me \\ all those hide and \\ seek faces peeling\\ with freudian dreams.”

      What does the phrase “freudian dreams” mean to you?

My instinct associates Freud and all things Freudian with a distinctly masculine, sometimes patriarchal interpretation of a thing, a sometimes overwrought interpretation of a thing. Without additional context, my instinct assumes ‘Freudian dreams’ encapsulate the more antagonising aspects of Freud’s framework of understanding, something from which the writer has freed herself. 

The mission to establish a colony of humans on Mars is becoming a realistic proposition. Would you agree to be one of the founding members?

I’d rather wait for the founding members to get a lay of the land before deciding whether or not leaving Earth is worth the risk.

This is the 10th anniversary of Ake Arts and Book Festival. If you have attended this festival before, please tell us what was special about your experience. If you have never attended, what are your expectations?

I’ve never attended Ake, but I have no real expectations and am excited to experience the festival in person.

What does Africa need right now?

I don’t think there’s one thing Africa needs, since situations vary from country to country, even village to village. I think a collective need ‘we’ have is an intensified effort to archive, uncover and document ‘our’ histories. The extent to which “our” culture is understudied and under-documented contributes broader contemporary challenges across the continent.