Nigeria Daily News: Omatseye: Back with a bang

Omatseye: Back with a bang
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234Next on 12/06/2011 11:03:00


Sam Omatseye has something good cooking. Barely a year after he presented two
poetry collections, ‘Mandela's Bones and Other Poems' and ‘Dear Baby
Ramatu', the chair of the editorial board of ‘Nation' newspapers is ready to
serve up some more offerings.
A novel, ‘Crocodile Girl'; collection of poems, ‘Lion Wind and Other Poems'
and ‘In Touch', a collection of some of his essays published in his column in
the ‘Nation' on Monday since 2006, will be presented on Wednesday, June 15, at
MUSON Centre, Lagos. The occasion will double as celebration of Omatseye's 50th
birthday. The columnist is in an upbeat mood.
But isn't releasing three new works a year after two others rather too fast?
The former journalism lecturer at Colorado State University in the United States
fires back: "What's fast about it? Shakespeare was believed to have written
furiously. He wrote fast. Conrad did not start writing on time. He didn't learn
a word of English until about 19 or so and he didn't publish any novel until his
30s but he made sure he published a novel a year until he died at the age of 72.
So, it depends on when the idea comes. As they say, you can't stand in the way
of a flood."
Not magical realism
Unlike his poetry, ‘Crocodile Girl' took longer to write. He did much of the
work last year. Although the work appears to be magical realism, judging by its
title, the former deputy editor of ‘Sunday Concord' says: "It is not; it is a
tale that exploits our people's penchant for superstition and the concept of
demigods in our culture."
The novel was inspired by a true story his father told him years ago about a
woman in one of the villages in Itsekiri land. "She was so beautiful people
thought that she probably was not human. They said when she went to the river,
when they spied on her, she turned into a crocodile and swam in the river but
she became a woman again when she got back on land. So when I was in the US, I
was looking at race relations, which obsessed me for many years and the issue of
slavery which as a graduate of History had always been in my consciousness, came
into focus in examining the relationship between Blacks, Africans and Caucasian
in the US. That was how the whole idea of writing a story about a Black woman
who had a slave background, who married a white man came into being."
Has he overcome his obsession with race?
"I'm still obsessed with the issue. I'm always obsessed with the issue of
ethnicity and ethnicism in Nigeria. Why people cannot rise against certain
minimal issues of courtesy and understanding. Why little issues can turn people
into monsters. Two peoples who are neighbours, they are nice to each other;
suddenly, they turn to monsters."
Focus on nature
While some writers have pre-determined themes, it is not the same for the
recipient of the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship. As he puts it: "When I am
writing a story or poem, I'm not thinking about preoccupation. I'm overwhelmed
by how the words I'm putting together are going to make sense. It is afterwards
that I bring my conscious part on it and start saying maybe what I have just
said now is about this or about that."
Politics, governance and materialism are some of the issues Omatseye touched on
in ‘Mandela's Bones and Other Poems'. This time, his muse led him to focus on
nature. "For instance, in the lead poem, ‘Lion Wind', the lion stands for
Asiwaju [Bola Tinubu], who they call ‘Lion of Bourdillon'. I am using the
nature metaphor to tell stories. So, you have ‘Lion Wind', ‘Pollutant',
‘The Haiti ‘Quake', ‘Python', ‘The Canary' and some few others in the
collection. Though I looked at other issues, the main focus was nature."
Political writer
Politics is an integral part of Omatseye's writings and it will continue to be
so for a while. "You cannot divorce politics from my writings because I am a
political animal," he reiterates. "A critic once said, ‘there is no work of
art that has no politics'. To me, we cannot discuss the issue of race, slavery
and alienation without concentrating on politics. Every narrative is ultimately
politics."
Omatseye's favourite writers include poets William Blake and Leopold Sedar
Senghor, and novelist Joseph Conrad.
A good writer but...
No stranger to controversy for some of the views he espouses in his weekly
column, Omatseye drew a lot of flak sometime ago for his commentary on why
Chinua Achebe has not won the Nobel Prize. According to him, the formal
properties of the writer's ‘Things Fall Apart' "falls short". It is a work of
a powerful theme, affecting a great sweep of African history, the age of
colonialism. But for most part, it gives more material for Sociology."
Did he expect the negative reactions he got? "I can't say I didn't but I didn't
expect it to that extent. My point about Achebe does not make me think he is not
a good writer; I am just saying people should not give him the credit that does
not belong to him. Achebe is a good storyteller but his best work is not even
the one people are making noise about. His best work is ‘Arrow of God', which
is by all accounts a profound work. But it's not as profound as Golding's
‘Lord of the Flies', Shakespeare's ‘Julius Caesar' or Soyinka's ‘Death and
the King's Horseman'.
So, while we appreciate the story for its simplicity, we should appreciate it
for its level in the pantheon of works. That's my point. I am not trying to
derogate him. It's a good work for researchers. In fact, I have met a lot of
people in the US who were looking at ‘Things Fall Apart' not so much for the
literary merit but because of information that they gleaned from it for African,
Nigerian and Igbo cultures."