#titilope sonuga

[kushandwizdom]

Do not romanticize suffering. There is nothing poetic about a love that breaks your spirit.

Titilope Sonuga

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Titilope Sonuga named Edmonton, Canada’s poet laureate.

Titilope Sonuga named Edmonton, Canada’s poet laureate.

Titilope Sonuga was named the Poet Laureate of Edmonton, Canada on June 22, 2021. She starts her term on July 1, 2021. A Poet Laureate’s role in the modern age is to reflect the life of a city through readings of poetry. As an ambassador for the literary arts, the Laureate incorporates poetry into a range of official and informal city activities. The city of Edmonton in Canada has a Poet Laureate…

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on becoming

[bellephill]

Part two of Titilope Sonuga’s #OpenWithTitilope series in Photos

Part two of Titilope Sonuga’s #OpenWithTitilope series in Photos

Nigeria’s leading performance poet, Titilope Sonuga‘s Open series continued to another sold out audience at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Yaba on Sunday, July 16th.

The Ndani TV’s Gidi Up actor delivered another evocative and magical performance underscored by the musical stylings of the three-piece band of Ayodele David on base guitar, Afolabi Adekoima on the drums, Obinna Nwereon the…

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[mfgalaxy]

SPOKEN WORD ARTIST, TV STAR, INTEL-NIGERIA SPOKES-POET + CIVIL ENGINEER TITILOPE SONUGA (MF GALAXY 082)

PERFORMING AT PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION, REPPING INTEL-NIGERIA’S SHE WILL CONNECT CAMPAIGN, WHY ARTISTS SHOULD EMBRACE SCIENCE + TECHNOLOGY

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The “brain drain” from Africa’s 55 countries is the cause of much lamentation—sending legions of doctors, engineers, and other professionals to serve the West at the exact moment they can lead economic growth at home. But Titilope Sonuga is part of the unheralded but very real “brain train,” the expatriates who are moving back home with education, skills, and networks they’ve gained abroad. Sonuga has ridden that train. She’s lived on two continents, had a career in Canada as a civil engineer, co-founded Edmonton’s thriving Breath In Poetry performance collective and hit stages with her work across the country, relocated to her family’s home country of Nigeria, become an Intel spokesperson to encourage women to use information technology, performed her verse at the inauguration of Nigeria’s president, and ascended to television stardom in Nigeria. Not bad for a thirty-year-old, huh? In today’s episode of MF GALAXY, Titilope Sonuga discusses:

How she came to perform at the presidential inauguration for a country of 180 million people

Her approach to rehearsals for spoken-word poetry performances and how she addresses anxiety

The purposes of Intel Nigeria’s campaign She Will Connect, and why the tech giant asked her to be its spokesperson

The many reasons that artists should embrace science and technology, and how her engineering mindset lives in her poetry aesthetics, and

The perks of getting famous by being a star on one of Nollywood’s most beloved television shows.

Sonuga spoke with me by Skype from her apartment in Lagos, Nigeria on November 15, 2015. SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE ON iTUNES SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE ON STITCHER SUPPORT MF GALAXY ON PATREON FOR MORE INFORMATION + LINKS

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titilope.ca

okayafrica: “Why You Should Be Watching Nigeria’s Gidi Up”

http://www.okayafrica.com/video/nigerian-tv-gidi-up-ndani

Gidi Up, Season 2, Episode 11: Shots Fired

Titilope Sonuga – She Will Connect campaign for Intel Nigeria

Titilope Sonuga at TEDx Edmonton

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Titilope Sonuga discusses poetry, her work with Intel ‘She Will Connect’ and the move from art to science.

Titilope Sonuga doesn’t remember when she fell in love with writing. Though during a talk at poetry festival, ‘kein shöner Land’, she recalls her mother leaving a notebook every time she left town. The book was intended for Sonuga, the youngest in the family, to keep record of her siblings’ wrong doings.

Years later and she’s still documenting. The subject matter has, of course, changed. The Nigerian-Canadian poet now scribbles her personal experiences and her thoughts and feelings on the state of affairs in Nigeria. Hide and Seek, for instance, asks questions about the kidnapped Chibok Girls, while Icarus urges us to empathise.

During ‘kein shoner Land’, Sonuga and I sat to talk poetry, women empowerment and the move from science to art. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.  

I read your [Through her Eyes] piece on Bella Naija and had a little chuckle when you spoke about what people are really asking when they say ‘what do you do’. So I wanted to start off by asking: “What are you worth? Who do you know? What can you do for me?”

Titilope: (Laughs) I am worth only the weight of myself in words in poems —so not much. Who do I know? Some cool people. What can I do for you? I’m not sure. I talk a lot.

I’m really interested in education and the empowerment of women and I know you’re a part of Intel’s ‘She Will Connect’. I wanted to know what brought about that partnership and how important is education and empowerment of women to you?

It’s huge! The collaboration came about because I actually have a background in engineering. In my former live, I was a Civil Engineer —designing and building roads, while I was writing poetry on the side. I knew I loved poetry and I wanted to make a life as a writer but engineering was something I was good at, and for the most part I enjoyed it, but it just didn’t feel like what I was called to do.

Intel reached to me because of that background, as well as my work in the arts. [It was about] how do we take a tech message and merge it with the arts so it is more interesting and more accessible. When I heard it was for women and girls I was like ‘where do I sign?’ because we are underrepresented and under appreciated. Particularly on the African continent. It was important for me to contribute.

For me, in my work with them, what I have seen is that it’s more than [just a tech conversation]. When you have a conversation with a young girl and say ‘You can be an engineer, you can be a computer scientist, you can be whatever you want to be’, something psychological happens. There is a confidence that is built up, that is what I am more interested in.

Do you think it is more about telling or showing them?

It’s telling, it’s showing. It’s all of it combined. You being able to repeatedly say to someone ‘You can. You can. You can’ and then showing them how they can.

I think that’s an important thing. It’s one thing to be like you can, then it’s another to say you can and this is how and these are other people who have done it. You can say you can do it, but then they go out there, into the world, and its slapping you in the face left, right and centre.

One of the things the program does well is it provides training opportunities for young girls. It is not just saying you can, it is connecting them with NGOs doing really important work in the tech space and saying ‘Hey, have you ever wanted to program a little robot? Here is how you do it.’ Pairing them with NGOs that do that work and allowing them to do hands on work. At the end of the training they have actually done something they can see. Then also reenforcing those ideas with images of women who have done it as well.

Part of the reason I am involved with the initiative is because I speak to women and girls one on one. That is important for me and important for them.

For an African child who studied science and wants to transition to the arts, how does that conversation happen?

I am a bit of a problem child. At the time when I left engineering officially, it was only a couple of years ago, I had sort of been working myself up to do it for some time. Poetry had become a big part of my life; I was teaching workshops in school, I had lived in South Africa for a few months at a writing residency, I had been invited to the Achebe Colloquium so I had performed for Chinua Achebe, and I had met Maya Angelou.

I say this to say that for my parents at least they were manifestations of things I had done that they could brag about. Which is very important to African parents. I think they weren’t too too surprised by the time I said listen I want to try.

One of the things I have learnt is that sometimes, when it is time for you to do something and you take the first step the universe responds with a bunch of different things, to re-enforce that you are doing the right thing, which is what happened with me.

What was the most surreal experience?

All of them. Aside from my fan girl moment when I meet these people, it is just realising that even as time has gone on, they have remained steadfast in their principles —who they are and what they stand for. So as I grow in my work, I am at the beginning of the journey, it is always in the back of my mind, being able to clearly define who you are and what you are trying to say. So when you look at your body of work, you can see the thread from start to finish. You can say she decided and she followed through. Of course, you are going to grow and evolve but generally at the core of who you are let your message but pure and let it be true. Maya Angelou in particular was one of those people who felt so true and authentic. In the work of becoming a better writer and a better person, I look to those people and think if I can be a speck of what they were, then I have done very very well.

You spoke [during the poetry talk] about how Nigeria influences your poetry, can you expand?

I was writing poetry about being Nigerian before I moved back to Nigeria. It was coming from a place, very far off. It was like looking at a place in the distance. The way you write about it is very different from what you write when you are living in it. Me moving back home was an attempt to write more honest, authentic and true place. Nigeria is a bed of inspiration. Some of the greatest writers of our time come out of that country and it is easy to see why.

There is something about our spirit that inspires poetry and literature. Trying to become a woman under the pressure cooker of living in Lagos is a very fascinating thing and it is an endless well of possible material -every day, all the time. I don’t know, yet, where my journey is going but I know a big chunk of my time living in Nigeria has left an impression on me, that has changed me. Changed who I am fundamentally and how I write and what I want to write about —what I think is important or relevant or useful.

You performed the ‘We are Ready’ poem for the inauguration of President Buhari, there is a line, which felt like a plea to the President and also God. I wanted to get your thoughts on that.

Poetry is interesting [because] people interpret it differently. At the time when President Buhari was elected, leading up to it, there was this contagious hope in the country. People were excited and thought that we had a chance as a country. Out of that came this #BabaNowThatYouAreThere, in this hashtag people wrote their wishes and hopes for the country –really heartbreaking and moving stuff. So me including that was a nod to those people and their wishes and requests. The entire poem was supposed to be a nod to those people and what had been expected of us and what we actually made happen.

In a sense it is me saying, remember the people who put you there —it is both a request and a silently veiled threat. It has a dual meaning in that sense, that the people are powerful and they now know that they have a voice.

The featured video of Titilope Sonuga reciting was shot during ‘kein shöner Land’ in Berlin. More of Sonuga’s work can be found online via titilope.ca.

Also special thanks to Jana at ‘kein shöner Land’ for organising this interview. 

See what’s on Titilope Sonuga’s reading list.

[notesfromberlin]

Titilope Sonuga reciting at Berlin poetry festival, ‘kein shöner Land’. Take a look at a reading list courtesy the Nigerian poet.