By Ismail Bala
Department of English and French
Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria.
Ismail: How did you start writing?
Yusuf: I started writing very early out of my interest to share stories in written form, stories that I heard from aunties and sisters. Stories that i feel are just good stories to share. But that desire must have been assisted by my father’s habit of asking us to write a report whenever he took us for an excursion. Later, I read a lot of Hausa novels and short stories in addition to the folktales I listen to regularly. I love stories. By the time I was in Primary six, a friend and I wrote a ‘book’ we titled ‘Amina and the Snake’. We illustrated it because we were artists then. I can’t remember what the story is all about, but I always remember the title. By the time I was in form 3, I started writing my own book (Maza Gumbar Dutse) that was on February 13th 1983 and finished it sometimes in September that year. It was an interesting journey indeed.
Ismail: You have written poetry in English, novels and short fiction in Hausa, and you have equally being a literature enthusiast and a cultural activist in the wider sense of the word. Are you more or less at ease in any one form than in others? Or rather do you have a particular liking for one form?
Yusuf: Yes, I write in both Hausa and English. I started writing in Hausa because it is my mother tongue and I am more fluent in it and my early literary influence is in Hausa. I read a lot of stories in Hausa and I was always impressed with the imaginative skills displayed by Hausa writers. It is really amazing to create a story out of imagination. So my earliest writings are all in Hausa and are all fiction. To be frank, I find it easier and more in control writing fiction in Hausa than in English. My interest in writing in English began when I was in form five after being introduced to poetry by our English teacher, a Ghanaian. My first English poem was titled Life. I can only remember one line ‘work and rest’ that’s it. I really find it easier to write poetry in English because English poetry is more flexible than Hausa. I have attempted many a times to compose poems in Hausa and most of the time I failed. I am impatient when it comes to expressing myself. So, rightly, I use two forms. Fiction is mostly in Hausa and Poetry almost entirely in English.
Ismail: Your first collection of poems, Litters is indeed an innovation in publishing in Nigeria. It is printed as a pocket size pamphlet. What promoted that experiment?
Yusuf: I decided to publish a pocket size book because I feel it is handy and costs very small amount of money to publish. The idea was to encourage new poets especially young one to publish while waiting for the big book. In addition to it, I also started poetry card series. I published two of my poems Happiness and Faith just like post cards (actually smaller). The book and the card were popular to readers but I was unable to get any of those targeted to send their manuscripts while the cards I distributed free of charge. I know of a fan who still keeps a copy in the bag.
Ismail: Could it be right to say the poems in Litters: short, epigraphic, and written in a burst of creative frenzy (given the dates appended at the end of the poems); the poems are consciously written to fit the medium in which they are published?
Yusuf: Somehow yes. Most of the poems were written in 1997. It may interest you to note that they were a kind of impulse prompted by Zainab Alkali whom I met and she promised to help me get a book published. My problem at that time was I have no English manuscript at hand and that was what she was referring to. So said to myself, ‘you have some poems especially those you wrote for children, why not try your hands on poetry, may be in a months you can have a collection’
Ismail: You are a Medical Geographer by training, though during your undergraduate days you did some courses in Hausa language and literature. What challenges, if any, did you face switching, so to speak, between different poles, each with its own demands and expectations?
Yusuf: It is an interesting experience. While I was an undergraduate student at the Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto, I decided to take courses from Sociology and Hausa. I found both Sociology and Hausa very engaging and appealing. Sociology was my best because I enjoy it much and I hardly get less than a B score in the examinations, I nearly transferred to Sociology. As for Hausa, my interest in literature makes it very attractive. I found the courses educative. However, my relationship with Hausa lecturers and students was close. I joined the Kungiyar Hausa and rose to become Secretary General. As for Geography, I always love the discipline since my secondary school days. I was among the best students of Geography in my class. Geography gives me the knowledge of places, the understanding of man’s relationship with his environment and fuels my imagination.
Many of my classmates were not aware that I was majoring in Geography, they all thought I was majoring in Hausa. I feel at home among literary circles as well as Geography’s. After my MSc degree at Ibadan, I became closer to Geography because my stay at Ibadan has widened my understanding of the discipline. When I chose to specialized in Medical Geography, all my energy was turned there. I read widely and tried to establish linkages with physicians. It was easier linking with art scholars than with medical scholars. I faced a lot of challenges blending with the medics. They find it difficult to see a Geographer in their midst especially younger academics.
But i switch naturally when I am with physicians or literary circles. Most at times I forget about my literary self when with medics and vice versa. But the experience is really, really rewarding.
Ismail: Many of your poems, especially those in Litters in a way betray your professional calling, since the question of geography, space and how such are mediated by the imagination are central to your poetry. How much, if at all, is your geographical expertise carried over into your writing?
Yusuf: You are right to some extent, but if you look closely, you will find some poems that are geographic in the collections. Poems like Kano, Ancient Egypt, Plea for mother Earth and so on. However, sometimes when I write, I just write as a human being rather than a geographer. When I chose to write as a geographer, you see the influence clearly. Do not forget my strong background in Sociology.
Ismail: All the poems in Litters are dated; their composition time stamped on them; putting them into a specific temporal setting. Don’t you think that would necessarily consign them into a particular time-frame, and force a reading of them within that time-slot?
Yusuf: That is a good observation. I do date my works initially for my personal record. After reading many biographies of English poets, like Keats, Blake, Auden and so on, I realised the difficulty faced by researchers in putting certain poems in context. Secondly i realised that as a poet we sometimes hold a particular view on a subject and latter change. In addition, my poems are usually influenced by events and experiences, dating the poems will give them timeframe but also remove their timelessness. Some of my poems I think are timeless but many are time bound.
Ismail: Each of your three collections depicts a semiotic pictogram and illustrations on the cover: Litters has a picture of the earth as seen from Apollo 17; Landscapes of Reality has a silhouette of a seemingly rowdy scene, with child-like drawings of what could pass for cars at the bottom; and your latest book, They can Speak English, has two juxtaposed pictures: men pushing bicycles in an arid place, and an inverted shot of skyscrapers. Could you talk about these extra textual messages?
Yusuf: I was an artist and still a photographer. I run a photo blog at the internet (www.hausa.aminus3.com). I always try to tell a story from the illustrations I put on the cover of my books. While in Litters I used Apollo 11 picture of the earth to emphasise my Geographic background and portray the Earth as our common home and destiny as human race, I used a two pictures in Landscapes. On the front is a picture of Motorcyclists portraying them in a petrol station and the back cover is a picture of a beggar. All these pictures try to capture the essence of the poems because of their topicality. The drawings were done by my son. He was trying to draw a long queue at the petrol station he saw. I find the drawings very telling and so used it to show a child’s reality of the Nigerian situation. The last one, They Can Speak English, tells another story. The two pictures (that were transformed) and presented upside down are talking about globalisation. While the one at the top was portraying developing countries and their reality, the other represents developed economies. Their reality and ours are different and it us just not comprehensible how they would insists on us seeing things the way we do. We have different realities.
Ismail: You’re also a photographer: how feasible is it to say you approach the poem not just with the poet’s eyes but also with the photographer’s sensitivity to light, texture, colour, shadows and moods?
Yusuf: I love photography. I started photography very early too. I got my first camera (110) from my uncle at the age of eleven. I like photographs because they freeze our time. When you shoot a picture, the image you get is a snapshot of a particular moment in history. It tells a lot. I can say, my interest in photography may have some influence my poetry because i also see a poem as an account of my mind at a time. That timeframe feature is there. May be that is why I date my poems in addition to other reasons I forwarded.
Ismail: You run a poetry column for some time now on the Sunday Trust literary pages devoted entirely to “Poetry of Place”. Is your sense of place necessarily couched in geographical rather than imaginative terms or vice versa?
Yusuf: I think it is both poetic and geographical at the same time. The idea of poetry of places came after I wrote a number of poems on different places, which were inspired by a visit to the places or experiences from certain places. When I realised that I have written a dozen or so poems about places, it became clear to me that the geographer in me is gaining control of the poet. So I deliberately tried to expand and cover more places within the country and beyond. Before you know it I have a good collection. When I started the column, I received many messages and request from people in other places requesting poems on their towns and villages. I tried to obliged. Truly, the geography is more than the poetry in the poems as I have mentioned in my introduction to the column.
Ismail: Does being a bilingual writer come with any problem? How easy or difficult it is to switch over linguistically and imaginatively between different languages, different genres: each with its own requirements?
Yusuf: Well, for me, it is not difficult to switch linguistically even though I find it easier to write certain genres in one language than another. For example, even though I write fiction in English, I find it easier to write it in Hausa than in English. I write poetry only in English. I find it difficult to write poetry in Hausa because of its strict rules.
Ismail: The title of your third collection, They Can Speak English, is rather bland, even unpoetic. What called for that title?
Yusuf: Yes. It is not normal for poetry collections to have titles like this. I chose the title for the collection after the attention it received from German High School students. I know that it sounds unusual but it has that aura of captivating a reader. Many people are eager to read beyond the cover when they see it. It is an experiment. An experiment always looks awkward and even weird but when it succeeds it becomes acceptable and normal. We shall see what critics would say about the title in the next few years to come, but I like the title very much.
Ismail: Your poetry is often said to be simple: the diction uncluttered, the imageries derived, as it were, from what the reader could easily relate to; yet there is, one could argue, a deceptive ingenuity behind the so-called simplicity. Is this something directly related to your conception of poetry as a public form?
Yusuf: Absolutely yes. Poetry is not a popular genre of literature in English because it is shrouded in mystery of its meaning. Students hate poetry because they don’t derive pleasure in what they do not understand. There are many poets that try to hide the joy of their poems behind a difficult word terrain. Some tried to make a forceful use of language in order to display their wordscraftmanship, some use many images as to take away the simplicity of their works. Some write imitating other poets that are successful. One can see how poets force themselves to use language as the primary raw material for poetry. Many see the quality of their writing in the scale of its difficulty. Well, every poet has his choice.
When I started writing poetry, I adapted the same method I use when I write fiction. I give it to someone to read and see if it makes sense. I realised people don’t enjoy poems that are difficult. I made a resolution that I must take my poetry to the street and make it not only enjoyable but also very accessible to everyone. I want to say that I have succeeded in making the street to appreciate poetry at the risk of being dismissed by fellow poets and critics as being too simplistic. I have made it a tradition to present poems at every public gathering I attend. I made poetry presentation at workshops (academic and developmental) conferences, wedding ceremonies, and many more. I have been taking poetry to the public, and I enjoy how people appreciate it. As a poet, I will feel defeated if the reader didn’t understand me because if did not understand me, he/she will not appreciate me. I want to be appreciated by my readers.
Ismail: You have also published books for children; how difficult it is to make a transition between writing for adults; fairly straightforward undertaking compared to the demanding nature of children’s writing?
Yusuf: Writing for children is interesting but challenging. Writing for children requires a lot of patience and skills. One has to put at the back of his mind that he is writing for children and must try to see through their eyes and mind. Whenever I write anything for children, I usually give the draft to kids that I target and ask for their opinions and observations. That is how I understand if I am communicating or not.
Ismail: What can you say about the publishing scene in Nigeria, yourself being a publisher?
Yusuf: It is a difficult terrain. This is so because many Nigerians don’t read and if they don’t read, they won’t buy books. If people don’t buy books publishers can make profit. If publishers can make profit, they can’t stay in business. In the 1970s and 80s when the economy was good and education was sound, government make bulk purchase of books and many people especially students buy books. This kept publishers afloat. When the economy slumps and education was neglected the markets for books declined and that affected the publishing industry. The inability of major publishers especially multi-nationals to publish supplementary books affected creativity in the country. Creative writers found themselves in a difficult situation. One can write as many manuscripts as possible only to find no publisher. Many manuscripts were rejected on the flimsy excuse of being not standard. That gave rise to self publishing, commission publishing and local publishers. Most of us emerged out of these circumstances. We were forced to publish only authors who are able to pay some fees. Those who can’t pay remain unpublished. But the greatest challenge facing local publishers is poor capital base, low capacity, poor marketing system and lack of technical know-how. It is a very rough terrain. But it is encouraging how we use our initiatives to cop up.
Ismail: You are from the North-west: a region that is seen as a literary desert when compared to other regions (even within Northern Nigeria). What do you think account for paucity of cultural production of English expression from the region?
Yusuf: When few published works come out from this region, is not an indication that very little is being done. To the best of my knowledge, there is a great potential for English literary production in this region. There are many promising writers who need a little push to be great. There are many reasons why this don’t happen. Hausa authors have been successful in creating their own market by creating their own loyal readership. Therefore, when a Hausa author loan some money and publish his work, it sells and he/she makes the money back and sometimes get profit. English authors have not been as ingenious. Secondly, the few that are able to publish have not received the right attention from local critics. No matter how good an author is, he needs to be promoted, unless he is promoted, he is no body. This region lagged behind in that aspect and that has contributed in hiding otherwise great talents. There is also the problem of readership which resulted from poor promotion.
Ismail: There is a constant “carrying forward” of many of your poems from one collection to the other; even when each book may have specific larger concern different from the rest. Don’t you think this gives the book the feeling of being interim collections where poems are harvest for the next book (without such being neither a selected nor collected volume)?
Yusuf: Well, I also wonder why poets do that. Sometimes you can’t explain why but, most often, such things happened because the different collections have some common strings. Sometimes it is done because you want such poems to be read by many. So if a reader got one collection and not the other, he still gets to read those poems.
Ismail: If you are asked about the writers who influenced and inspired you, who would those writers be?
Yusuf: Frankly they are largely Hausa Writers, notably Ahmadu Ingawa (Author of Iliya Dan Mai Karfi) Abubakar Imam (Magana Jari Ce).Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (Shehu Umar) As for English authors, I also enjoyed the works of Rider Haggart, George Orwell, Jonathan Swift, Ngugi Wa Thiango and they must have fed my imagination in some ways. As for poetry, I want to say I enjoyed the poems of English poets like William Blake, Keats, Auden and many others I cannot remember. For African poets I like Osundare’s poem and many African poets in anthologies, many I cannot remember their names but they really do influence my writings.
Ismail: You are among the most vocal proponent of the new Hausa novel, the so-called Soyayya (romance) pamphlets which are mass produced mainly in Kano (prompting the sobriquet “Kano Market Literature”, similar to Onitsha Market Literature; yet you also dislike and down play the comparison and the market tag given to those books.
Yusuf: Yes. I have said a lot about this and have giving many interviews and even published a couple of academic articles on this. But for the purpose of this interview I want point out the fact that Hausa Popular Literature has been misunderstood by many especially academics and religious critics. First of all, because it is a new phenomena that was under-rated and not given attention. When the literary movement that created it flourish, it was initially dismissed as mere soyayya novels, market literature and many other names. We are against those labels because they are derogatory and unfair. The literary movement saved Hausa literature from dying and gave Hausa literature an enviable position of being the fastest growing literary language in Africa. .
Ismail: You have professed your penchant for the African-American poet, Dollar Brand, even dedicating one of your poems to him. What is African-American poetry like to you?
Yusuf: I read a few of them and I like them very much. Dollar Brand’s poem influenced or inspired me to write They Can Speak English, a poem that is popular especially in Germany because it is a recommended text for High School students. I communicated a lot with German students over their assignments.
Ismail: And you have lived and wrote in the US; what would you say are the major strengths of American poetry and writing generally compared to Nigerian poetry?
Yusuf: American poetry is a public poetry if I may say so. Nigerian poetry is somehow still shackled by difficulty and dogma (if I may say so). Poetry I think is a personal explosion of thoughts and I want to believe that anything explosive is also visible. In the case of Nigerian poetry, we are somehow constraint to believe that only poetry in the image of Okigbo, Soyinka, Clerk etc are good poems. Poems that, are very difficult to decipher, poems that are too technical. I attended some readings in Alabama and I made presentations. I have published poems in American journals and read many. The power of American poetry is lies in its variety, straightforwardness and wide subject matter. The power of Nigerian poetry lies in its complexity, traditional fusion and powerful language. Somehow, I enjoy American poetry.
Ismail: You have tackled the question of language in They Can Speak English. In the Afterword of that collection you implied rather vaguely that you’d rather write in Hausa.
Yusuf: Yes. I can express myself better in Hausa than in English so, when I write in Hausa I say it better. We write in English because of our colonial past, if there was no colonialism we would probably be writing in Hausa language in West Africa or may be in Arabic. But the desire to have wider audience has also contributed to the desire to write in English. Every author would be pleased with a large audience and English language gives that opportunity. I will like to translate my Hausa works into English at least that would give the world what I see as a Hausa speaker from that perspective.
Ismail: There is something enigmatic; disturbingly unsettling about your title, Landscape of Reality. Aren’t landscapes always about the real: portending reality in its manifest, concrete dimension?
Yusuf: Not necessarily so. Reality is relative but it can be shared. The title was used because it the poems in the collection discuss about our reality, about what we know and experience all the time. Reading it is like walking in the landscape of our lives.
Ismail: You have an abiding interest in Egyptology: one of your Hausa short fictions is about the possibility time travelling within the context of ancient Egypt. What is your take about the relationship between literature and history? Is history always best seen through the prism of textuality?
Yusuf: You are right. I have strong interest on ancient Egypt. I was introduced to Egyptology around 1986 by Professor Muhammadu Hambali Junju at the UDUS. He is a linguist and his interest in Egypt is obsessive. He is a follower of Cheikh Anta Diop and he is of the believe that Hausa people originate from ancient Egypt. His theory of Egyptian origin of Hausa people has been controversial among Hausa scholars. Since 1986, I have been reading about ancient Egypt, I even have a copy of the Book of the Dead. So I am really passionate about Egypt. Literature is part of history or rather a source of history. History is usually written by the victor, so sometimes you only get the version of the writer. Literary text however tells a rather wider story. It gives detail information about daily life of a people you may not find in history books just as it tells us more about places that we are not told in Geography text book. However, I don’t want to believe that history is always best seen through the prism of textuality.
Ismail: If you edited Pregnant Skies, your anthology of 50 Nigerian poets, now would the selection or taste differ?
Yusuf: Certainly yes. There emerge many new poets that are equally good today, yet I am happy with the selection as it were that time. I think, it is the most representative of Nigerian poetry at least geographically than any anthology published in the country.
Ismail: In Litters did you find a voice, or you think you have broken a new territory? How do you see the pamphlet now?
Yusuf: Somehow yes, because it was the first collection that launched me into world of poetry at least for adults. It received some critical attention and allows readers and critics to handle a new kind of poetry that is simple and somewhat unconventional. Despite the views expressed by critics that some of the ‘poems’ are too prosaic or not even poems, the depth of their contents was a food for thought. It shows at least there is a new poet who is not afraid to be called prosaic poet, who is largely independent of the orthodox poetry tradition. I am planning to re-issue it in a standard format to see if the reaction would be different.
Ismail: Though you exchange poems between your books, but in what ways do you think your concerns in each book have evolved since you started writing poetry?
Yusuf: Each collection came up independently, but the selection of what poem to include is largely influenced by the tune of the collection. Many times, there is an overlap. This is on the assumption that the reader of a particular collection might not have read the other, so it give the reader opportunity to read from another collection that may not be available.
Ismail: Is the poem, “Global Village” necessarily a poetic censure of globalization; or is it, in a subtle, distant way, an acknowledgement of its seemingly unstoppable match across the globe?
Yusuf: It is in some way. The way Globalization is viewed varies. Some see it as a positive phenomena others see it otherwise. Some see it as an ultimate necessity created by technology, some see it as a systematically orchestrated phenomena aimed at establishing a single global government. I believe information technology has succeeded in making the world flat, the friction of distance has been removed and people find it easier to interact and communicated but also sell their views with a blink of an eye. Yet, it exposes the less economically developed countries to the dangers of cultural domination by the developed countries, who use their socio-cultural scale to measure others. There is a danger in this and that’s what I was trying to point out. Ultimately, world culture is being shaped by information technology and the outcome may not be unilateral.
Ismail: You have had an academic fellowship in the States, you have read, published and wrote many poems there as well; is there an American Yusuf whose poems are influenced by America, American poetry or American culture in any way?
Yusuf: Obviously yes. I was there when the 911 attacks took place and I have seen how the world changed. I wrote many poems while in the US and if you remember they are all presented at the Creative Writer Forum. I am now thinking of publishing the poems in one collection. My Fulbright fellowship in the at the University of Alabama at Birmingham has influenced my subsequent writing. But I like American poetry because it is like mine, it is simple, straight forward and even prosaic as some use to call it.
Ismail: Finally, what would like to be remembered for?
Yusuf: Well, this is a big one. I am something else. But after my demise I would like to be remembered by academic and literary community. I want to remembered, as a scholar who has contributed to the development of knowledge in my country. I also want to be remembered for my contributions to the development of literature in my country. But in the end, I would remembered by what people feel I deserved to be remembered for. Allah knows best.
