Poetry can be defined as a genre of literature in which the expression of feelings and ideas is intensified. So how does one go about becoming a master at this craft? In this conversation, Cheruto Rono engages with award-winning Kenyan poet Clifton Gachagua on his journey and this work.
Cheruto: Thank you for having this conversation with me, Clifton. Tell me, what have you encountered of late that was worthy of a poem? What is your current muse?
Clifton: I have not been able to write for quite some time, having to edit, teach and work at Down River Road. So, poems don’t come easily to me. I’ve however met someone who is really brilliant and they sent me a poem – a personal one, and I felt I should send one back. So really it was about friendship. I was in this mad place at midnight writing and editing this poem – and I often do not edit. But in this case, I worked on the thing for hours and hours, labouring over rhyme, style and craft, in a way to impress them, although they don’t go for that kind of thing, but I’ve been reading so much about craft such that it complicates everything I write.
Cheruto: The work and time you put into the poem that you speak of reminds me of a quote by Auden that says, “A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.” My takeaway is that language takes precedence when it comes to poetry; it is what carries the day. Do you agree with this sentiment? I’d like to delve deeper into your work, so I’d like to start at the beginning: how and when did you realize you have a passion for writing?
Clifton: That’s really interesting, the Auden quote. I’m reading a lot of Ben Marcus, who, in his introduction to The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, is really interested in language. The question of language and precedence: I’m not quite sure anything precedes poetry. It is the question of the existence of god.
It’s interesting, the question of how and when. I do not have a passion for writing. I just cannot live without it. I don’t know if one knows the why and when. (By the way, I’m listening to T Rex’s Crimson Moon and I really want to dance.) I was a very solitary kid, I’ve never known how to be with people, so I made friends with books and writing. Around the time I was in class 7, I had a crush on this girl with the biggest eyes and such a weird walk, and I went home and wrote a manifesto on love.
Then in high school, I came across Meja Mwangi — and this is somewhat the beginning of the river — so you get all your A’s and move on to university, but Meja left me pining for something that wasn’t there. So, in my first year at Maseno University, I’m reading Paradise Lost. I’m missing classes to read things I cannot understand, I’m getting interested in psychology and history. I’m completely alone. I’m failing in all my classes. but then I’m also falling in love — with writing.
Cheruto: Not even music precedes poetry? I’d like to believe that it does. Because music is poetry that you can dance to; it moves the soul but it also moves the body. Which is probably why you’re currently fighting the urge to dance to Crimson Moon, no?
But I digress. Back to your love for writing. It’s very true that none of us know when we truly find our destinies. It is often a string of events that might not make sense individually, but each is a small piece of the puzzle that ultimately reveals us to ourselves. Was reading Meja Mwangi’s works a pivotal moment for you? And what did you do after realizing that you had fallen irrevocably in love with words and writing?
Clifton: You got me there. And poetry, by definition, is a kind of song. All the arrangements. Last night I was thinking and listening to Vivaldi. And poetry is sound, yeah? You are right. But what I meant about precedence, is that much like god, it does exist.
It didn’t even begin with Meja by the way. The catholic church in Bangla, St. Trinity, I think it is called. So I have to go to mafundisho, which I think fancy people call catechism. I’m a wandering kid, completely solitary, like I said. And kaodo sickly, spindly. Do you know those old paper bags, the green ones that had a cowboy and calendar? I come across a paper bag full of books; they are John Kiriamiti’s books. So, I go home and read all of them. But they are all broken/separated at the spine, so I’m jumping from one chapter to the next. I don’t know where ‘My Life in Crime’ ends and ‘My Life with a Criminal’ begins. I loved it.
Cheruto: And what happened after Maseno University, where you had been studying biomedical science? I’m curious about how you cemented your identity as a writer. Simply put, how did you go from a scientific field of study to a published poet?
Clifton: After Maseno, I was completely disillusioned. I had graduated with Upper Class Honours in biology, I thought I loved it, particularly evolutionary biology. So I make my way to Juba to become a lab technician. Malaria, syphilis, testing for those. I don’t get the job. But I have this small Nokia that I’m using to send messages to a Maseno crush — god bless her — and during that time I wrote my novel –Z — in a really small room in Tongpin, Juba.
But it all started from Maseno. Frank and I and Patrick and Clef. We started a journal. They were media students, and we just started doing stuff. We’d spend nights on Adobe InDesign. I remember this one night we were up at 4am — the first time I saw the Milky Way. It was really beautiful. So now you have these people, completely committed to their act in this universe, you simply fall in love. And this this is beyond kinship, or friendship.
Cheruto: That sounds incredible, thank you for sharing about that.
In 2013, you won the Sillerman Prize for African Poetry. Tell me about that experience, and the poems that garnered you this accolade.
Clifton: For me it was quite simple. First, I submitted two manuscripts: Madman at Kilifi is a product of both. After campus, I went to Kilifi twice. It was a difficult time for me. I was also in love. Kilifi is such a beautiful place. On a Wednesday morning the tide is out. And the sand, it’s blinding white. So later for lunch you fry some sea food, which up to now I cannot name, using some spice, which now I cannot name, and you spend time with colleagues. And then they leave for the lab, where I think they are studying cases about HIV from Mtwapa.
Cheruto: So you wrote The Madman at Kilifi while at Kilifi, then moved to Juba temporarily before returning to Kenya. How have your travel experiences lent to your creativity?
Clifton: They have changed me a lot. And this is not just a question of moving across borders. I think one of my best experiences, when I was still young was going to Diani with a really good friend of mine, a mentor really. I did a lot of writing while at Kilifi, and returned there years later, still looking for love, but this time from a different person. I’ve written a lot about places I’ve been to. Kampala. Namanga. Dar es Salaam. Zanzibar. Nyali. It is that being away makes so much possible.
Cheruto: What places are on your bucket list to visit, you know, once travel restrictions are a thing of the past?
Clifton: Mostly the Indian Ocean islands. Comoros. Seychelles. I want to learn swimming. I think the Red Sea too. But basically, islands.
Cheruto: Finally, you’d mentioned Down River Road at the beginning of our conversation, and I’d like to circle back to that briefly. I’d like your insights on the importance of the work done at DRR. Why do you think it’s important for this platform to exist?
Clifton: We wanted to start a platform for writers. And to be able to pay them. It’s been a long dream, since we were kids, Frank and me. We don’t at all think it’s important. Simply necessary. There are a lot of publications coming up. We keep trying to figure it all out. Publish, pay, make a business out of it all. So that’s what we are doing. But also, we wanted to experiment with writing. With work. Ideas of work. What it all means mean to us. To create, for instance. Build things, make yourself vulnerable.
Cheruto: Thank you so much for sharing your journey with me, I definitely look forward to reading the next story you write.
Connect with Clifton Gachagua online