We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Pamilerin Jacob a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Pamilerin, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
Like all children, my first lessons came from my parents. I remember Dad dipping Agege bread in water because there was little else to eat. For tea, we could only afford ‘eruku Oshodi’ — an incredibly substandard substitute — which caused me major digestive problems well into adulthood. Three years after marriage, he’d done a career pivot which hampered finances. Yet, we were not without laughter, even after the loss of my baby brother who died at birth. Our morning prayers were full of clapping, singing, and dancing. Such optimism in the face of adversity and loss I would grow to learn from, however late. Also, thanks to poetry, I am surrounded by a cloud of witnesses: folks who have gone ahead, tumbled through life, from whose stories I glean strength. Plath or Okigbo, Gibran or Oliver, their poems and lives helped me navigate the world when the years of suicide attempts rolled in, to endure still my father’s passing.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
My primary obsession is Poetry Evangelism — to have poems be in every corner of Nigeria, Africa, the world. I want people to engage with poems the way they engage with music: to sit with words first and not obsess over meaning. My life is devoted to the omnipresence of poetry. It is what inspires the work I do with various literary magazines, and draws me to like-minded folks, who inspire me to do my best.
Poetry Column-NND, which I established in 2020, publishes one poet each week in Nigerian NewsDirect, a national daily. To further the agenda of poetry evangelism and creating more platforms for Nigerian poets, I added the annual Nigerian NewsDirect Chapbook Awards and the Folorunsho Editor’s Poetry Prize. I have Michael Imossan, I.S. Jones, Muiz Opeyemi, Olumide Manuel, Fatihah Quadri Eniola, Ojo Victoria Ilemobayo, Servio Gbadamosi, and Shoola Oyindamola to thank for their immense support so far. The Poetry Column has also partnered with the following prizes and festivals during its four years of existence: The Akachi Chukwuemeka Prize for Literature (2023, 2024), Sprinng Annual Poetry Contest (2024), Dr Samuel Folorunsho Ibiyemi Poetry Prize 2024 (run by The Lit and Debating Society, University of Ibadan), Babcock University Students Association Writing Competition (2024), Abuja International Poetry Festival (2024).
Through the UnSerious Collective (Adedayo Agarau, O-Jeremiah Agbaakin, Nome Emeka Patrick, Wale Ayinla, Michael Akuchie, Kolawole Samuel Adebayo and me), we established the UnSerious Collective Fellowship for Emerging Poets, which awards four Nigerian poets annually.
Inspired by Walcott’s Prodigal, Romeo Oriogun’s Nomad, Tade Ipadeola’s Sahara Testaments, Fortunate Traveller and a host of other amazing poets, I launched a magazine to fulfil that task. It is focused on the poetics of place, and we recently launched the Kukogho Iruesiri Samson Poetry Prize to further support those concerns. I have Adedayo Agarau, Jakky Bankong-Obi, Michael Imossan, and Flourish Joshua to thank for the success so far.
For Nigerian-African women poets, I founded Moremi Review spearheaded by Christtie Jay. The project arose after I encountered a study by Remi Raji and Aderemi Raji-Oyelade that documents 50 women poets from 1985-2005, most of whom are no longer in contemporary rotation. Zaynab Bobi and Damilola Omotoyinbo have been equally helpful for the success of that project. My obsession with poetry evangelism also drove me to assist in one way or another: Liberia’s leading literary journal, Pepper Coast Lit, founded by Jeremy T. Karn; Olumo Review by Flourish Joshua; Wild Pine by Henneh Kwaku Hyereh, The African Writers by Faith Moyosore and Kormbat, Global Poetics Project by Ama Bemma.
We are currently seeking grants to support the work done by the various platforms I established. Most of the time, we start rugged — even without a domain name — because the omnipresence of poetry supersedes the comfort of optics, in my opinion. My approach has always been to find people who have within them, my very blood, my obsession, and run alongside.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Early in my journey, my thirst for topics unrelated to my course of study was crucial for my development. I read about the Mayans in secondary school while avoiding classes. In the University, studying accounting, I spent years in between classes reading Neruda, Swinburne, Keats, Eliot in the library. History was equally dear, so too, Astronomy, Archaeology, and Comparative Religious Studies. For instance, it was Khalil Gibran’s poetry that led me to Sufism, which eventually led me to Thich Nhat Hanh in Buddhism, then Thomas Merton’s spiritual revolution in Catholicism. Being open to a multiplicity of ideas, regardless of one’s own convictions, will always improve artistic practice. More importantly, it expands one’s capacity for compassion.
Another thing that helped me is finding people who have similar ideas and working with them to achieve goals. It is always better to build community horizontally than vertically. My peers are everything to me, whether they agree with me on certain things or not. I believe in a canon that must contain the belligerent and gentle, the puritan and experimentalist, really, the whole spectrum of artistic idiosyncrasies.
In this world of volatile memory, where writers are expected to be ‘content creators’ to satiate the impatience of the reader, one must practice a private devotion to silence. Carl Newport’s Digital Minimalism was of great help to me in this regard. One must learn to balance the demands of the public’s wanting eye and that of the craft, else, artistic despair awaits.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
Encountering The Prophet by Khalil Gibran was life changing. It altered my way of seeing the world and artistic practice. My favorite poem from the bunch is “On Pain” where Almustafa says, “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” From there on out the poem unspools into pure wisdom. Fair to say encountering this book when I did was Divine Providence. In another poem, “On Work,” he says, “Work is love made visible,” which challenges me whenever it crosses my mind. The only other book whose wisdom surpasses this one is the Holy Bible.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://pamilerinjacob.weebly.com
- Instagram: @pamilerinjacob
- Twitter: @pamilerinjacob
- Youtube: pamilerin jacob
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