#23: A Conversation with Michael Imossan
"I can describe my art as a path towards astonishment, a means of purgatory through which I cleanse myself — seeking both redemption and justice.'"
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Today's interview is with Michael Imossan, an Ibibio poet from Nigeria, whose journey through the literary world has been marked by numerous accomplishments, including winning the prestigious 2024 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poetry for his collection "All That Refuses to Die."
His forthcoming chapbook "The Smell of Absence," will be published as part of the esteemed Kumi Na Moja: New-Generation African Poets series, solidifying his position as one of Africa's most compelling emerging voices. Liberian poet, Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, praised Michael’s collection as “an urgently necessary story”.
Michael is also the author of the award-winning chapbook "For the Love of Country and Memory", an exploration of Nigerian identity and an archive of its national pain as a nation plagued by poor governance and political corruption. His thought-provoking pamphlet, "A Prelude to Caving”, also examines themes of memory, loss and resilience.
In our interview, Michael reveals himself as a poet and philosopher of the human condition. His responses delve into the nature of artistic creation, drawing on influences from Lucille Clifton to Socrates. What emerges is a portrait of an artist who sees poetry not merely as a form of expression, but as a means of excavating truth and understanding the self. His thoughtful consideration of how multiple inner voices compete for expression offers a fascinating glimpse into the creative mind at work.
I was particularly struck by Michael’s perspective on craft as "a path towards astonishment, a means of purgatory through which I cleanse myself—seeking both redemption and justice”. This duality between the personal and the political — and the intimate and the universal — is threaded throughout his work and reflections on the creative process.
As Poetry Editor at The Chestnut Review and Curator of PoetryColumn-NND, Michael brings the same scholarly precision and artistic sensitivity to his work.
Follow Michael’s journey on Twitter, Instagram and Bluesky.
Who are you and how do you express your creativity?
The question of who I am, though a simple question, is quite complex, especially in relation to my art. And this is because I cannot totally say that I completely know who I am as I cannot say that I holistically know why I write. However, my art is an attempt at finding answers.
I am always searching for myself through my poems, always attempting an autopsy on myself, trying to know what poem can stir me into poison or what poem can make me bloom.
This reminds me of Socrates’ popular quote “Man know thyself”. While this may seem a one-time, one-way thing, it is a journey and I come to my art because I want to know myself.
And like Lucille Clifton once said, “we come to poetry not out of what we know but out of what we wonder”. I am always wondering who I am—and sometimes, I find myself as someone tired of the hardness of the world, as someone soaked in existential crisis, someone excited to see a butterfly make love to a bougainvillea, someone stirred by the soft slice of a song through the evening wind. With this, I can describe my art as a path towards astonishment, a means of purgatory through which I cleanse myself — seeking both redemption and justice.
What keeps you coming back to creative work? Why is it worth doing?
Necessity. I cannot imagine a world without art, without creative works. Like Toni Morrison once said “writing is a way of thinking, it is pure knowledge”. I come back to creative work because I want to think, because I want to understand this blue world, because I want to feel the pulse in everything, find where the poison settles and where the wound opens.
It is quite beautiful how this question relates to the previous in the sense that, in the process of thinking, one can stumble on oneself and in the process of questioning, one can happen on knowledge. In fact, even questioning is a kind of knowledge. I feel creative works provide a safe space to contemplate the injustices within and around us, it allows for one to enter inside it, brush their hands over what may at first seem a wall but isn’t, and in that, taste what freedom is.
This is, in fact, why creative work is necessary: while there are other things that promise freedom and morals, they may seem prescriptive and there’s no freedom in prescriptivism. However, with the characters, words, images, symbols, colors in creative works, we are not directly or brutally faced with instructions on how to be but provided a means through which we can encounter being. Creative work is worth doing because it is necessary.
What legacy do you hope to leave with your writing?
I have always thought of legacy in its material sense. Probably because that was the prototype meaning that first came to me and because of that, I have always steered clear of legacy in the same way I steer clear of material possessions. My retort against legacy is always “I just want to live and die”.
Nonetheless, contemplating legacy in the context of a long-lasting impact, I think my art is always striving to teach resilience, truth, kindness, redemption and beauty. As I earlier mentioned in the previous question, creative works do not brutally instruct, and because of that, my art, even when striving to teach, does not instruct rather, it provides space where one can sit and contemplate what it is to be human, to understand that as humans we are both capable of beauty and terror, that the terror can be used for beauty. And by this, I mean, we can speak terror to the face of oppression.
Putting all of these together, I would say that I hope to leave a simple legacy where my art fosters the fight against injustice, resilience while also allowing for redemption.
What are your biggest challenges when it comes to maintaining a steady creative practice, and how have you overcome them?
There are several challenges that bedevil a creative and moreso, a Nigerian creative. These challenges can be both intrinsic and extrinsic.
However, since we are talking about my biggest, I would say my biggest challenges are intrinsic, even though they may be extrinsically influence. I get distracted by my inner selves. I often think there are too many of me wanting to speak at the same time and because I cannot allow them all to speak, they keep screaming and screaming, asking for a chance. There’s a me that wants to pick a pen and write “stop the killings in Borno, Kaduna, Jos, Anambra”. There’s a me that wants to sing about these killings. There’s a me that wants to speak knife to all these killings. So, with this, the problem of focus establishes itself—to channel those other selves into that one self that wants to sing because a poet’s entire existence is to be like the songbird, to sing of the beauty and horrors around them. To say that I have overcome the challenge of focusing my inner selves would be so say that I have learned to tame a storm. However, I learned to work with it, to listen to the noise within me and make music out of it.
What advice do you have for someone who wants to start or maintain their creative practice in a new way?
Innovations are quite good although I am always wary of new things. Not to say that I am stuck in a conformist, traditional place but to say that I am capable of fear.
Fear for what is new because what is new often take several attempts before arriving at perfection and who isn’t scared of failing? However, it is for this same reason that I will advise one to acknowledge the role of imperfection in mastery, to not be scared of failing and even when scared because fear is inevitable, to attempt until there’s mastery or near mastery in their new creative practice.
Tell us about the role of mentorship and community support in your creative work and/or practice, and who has supported your journey.
I do not think I can exhaust the relevance or role of mentorship and community support in my creative work/practice. Though I never really had close mentorship, through the works of Romeo Oriogun, Kwame Dawes, Jame Baldwin, Richard Wright, Buchi Emetcheta, Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo, Su’eddie Agema, their interviews as well as lectures, I have found a path in my journey that promises light at the end.
For someone who has supported my journey, there are a lot however, one name stands out and I am writing it in caps: SU’EDDIE VERSHIMA AGEMA.
Who is your dream mentor?
Kwame Dawes.
(Interview answers received via email April 26, 2025.)
Cara, thank you for this interview with Michael Imossan. I, too, was struck by his notion of art as "a path toward astonishment... and as a purgative force ... and a means for seeking redemption and justice.” I found the entire interview so compelling. I just read “For the Love of Country and Memory” (thank you for the link), and will be going back to reread it; it’s truly powerful, the voice is mighty, the call for redemption and justice is urgent, unmistakable, and never didactic. The weave of personal and political, natural, seamless. Throughout, there is anguish and light, and I understand better Michael’s insistence on the necessity of poetry. His work needs wide distribution (I’ll be watching for more of it), and it looks like he’s on his way. Thanks again, Cara.