Uche Nduka
Uche Nduka — Poet, Essayist, Melodist, Singer, Philosopher, Dancer, Songwriter, Activist, Traveller, Lecturer — is a Nigerian by birth and a New Yorker by choice. He was awarded the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Prize for Chiaroscuro in 1997. He lived in Germany and Holland for over a decade, and was the recipient of a Goethe Institut Fellowship and Heinrich Böll Haus Guest Author Fellowship. He taught Contemporary African literature and Creative Writing at the University of Bremen from 1995–2007. Nduka’s volumes of poetry are Flower Child (1988), Second Act (1994), The Bremen Poems (1995), Chiaroscuro (1997), If Only the Night (2002), Heart’s Field (2005), Eel on Reef (2007), Tracers (2010), Ijele (2012), Nine East (2013), and Living in Public (2018). Nduka edited the anthologies, Poets In Their Youth (1988), and Und auf den Straßen eine Pest: Junge Nigerianische Lyrik (1996). Belltime Letters (2000) is his first book of prose. He has given lectures at numerous institutions internationally and in America including: “Reading Badilisha Poetry X-change” (Cape Town, South Africa — 2009); “On New Generation of Nigerian Poets/Writers,” (92nd Street YMCA, New York — 2007); “On New Nigerian Writing,” (University of Leiden, Holland — 2001); “Contemporary Nigerian Poetry,” (Alexander Humbolt University, Berlin, Germany — 1997). His writings have appeared in international and American journals and magazines including, Boog City, The Recluse, ODJEK (Sarajevo), Beatitude Poetry (San Francisco), Sentinel Literary Quarterly (London), Maple Leaf Literary Supplement (Canada), Downtown Brooklyn, Drumvoices Revue. His work has been translated into German, Serbo Croatian, Romanian, Spanish, and Dutch. He is a member of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), and American PEN. He currently resides in Brooklyn, NY with his partner the photographer/artist, Fiona Gardner, and their daughter, Sula.
Statement:
I write to live and I believe that making a sandwich is a political act. I don’t allow readers and critics to dictate to me what to write about or how to write it. I don’t feel the need to resolve the tension between tenderness and anger in my writings. I am interested in the correspondence between ideal and courage. Fluidity and messiness have continued to be options in my work. I want both. My writings attempt to question the weight of the factual. Committing to the vocation of writing also requires accepting a life of jeopardy. A life in poetry is not easeful. After nearly two decades abroad, I am still shaking the dust of Nigeria from my feet.
Abaji crouches waiting
between morning and morning
between year and year.
His flesh flees the ladder
in a forest of tastes (O stay and see).
Footworn, an apparition crosses
and recrosses his morning and year.
A footprint enters his thought.
He reads the Braille of the baffling hour.
The hour baffles with a crumpled brow
And a portrait of the world stares at the world.
Another man returns. Something else applauds.
Excerpted from Chiaroscuro, Yeti Press, 1997.
