Poetry Interview pt 3

Afam Akeh, is the author of Letter Home & Biafran Nights, a delightful poetry collection, with lines so quotable yet haunting.

In spite of his hectic schedule, the poet obliged me an interview, here is an excerpt:


Uche Peter Umez: There is almost a palpable sense of looking back in many of the poems in your collection. A masked feeling of nostalgia, the inexorable pull of memory. This image in the poem ‘Letter Home’ (pg 5) vividly captures this fact for me:

…the gecko
seeking warmth
behind shut doors
clambered
to its new perch,
dreaming of home
in another life.
The familiar dream
a constant lure…

How much of your ‘travel guilt’ still clings to you? Have you been unable to shed much of it?

Afam Akeh: Memory is not always friendly. I carry my immigrant travel guilt with me always – not in any disabling way, but in the sense that I am frequently reminded of it by daily encounters. I am acutely aware that I am not alone in these paths taken, but have also committed my children and possibly their children...


you can read the whole interview on Africa in Words