HCAF STARS SERIES INTERVIEW—JOEL OYELEKE
Question:
The Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation is known for her central role of nurturing creativity in youths across the country. How has being its member contributed to your growth as an artist, and what opportunities, or experiences have been most impactful for you?
Answer:
I open the HCAF national group almost everyday to meet news of a new win by another member. It’s amazing! Knowing that there’s a hub of young creatives doing so well in national and international competitions, events and literary engagements gives me solid inspiration to keep pushing myself. HCAF has also helped me find a community of humans seriously interested in arts and culture.
Question:
What themes and experiences push the creativity behind your work, and what part of the creative process poses a challenge to you?
Answer:
It might be slightly difficult to give a definite answer here because my work is consistently evolving. However, for sometime now, faith, love, passion and an eye for the beauty in ordinariness has wrought themselves in my writing. The part of my creative process that currently poses a big challenge is editing. I know now that serious writing is actually re-writing. That intense negotiation between what should stay, go, or be refined can be very burdensome.
Question:
As a renowned creative, what advice would you give to emerging artists who are looking to balance the pursuit of artistic excellence with the desire for recognition and validation?
Answer:
Well, someone just starting out shouldn’t bother about validation or recognition. Those things—more often times than not—are distractions. Doing and consistently improving in the art is the real stuff. It is the “meat” of the endeavor.
Question:
What purpose fuels your creativity?
Answer:
My purposes continue to shift. But one remains: the joy of saying the unsayable; the bliss of doing things with language never done before.
Question:
Fifty years away from now, what do you want the literary world to perceive of your art?
Answer:
That’s a long time from now. I’ll probably read whatever I answer here in the future and disagree. But to borrow from Carl Phillips, “they should read me and know my trade is wonder.”
Question:
Is representation a priority for you, and do you see a need for your writing to reflect your background, or ancestral links?
Answer:
The politics of representation is both bad and good. Bad because every writer should work without the burden of necessarily serving a “cause.” Good—for the fact that it increases the diverse voices and unique experiences available for global consumption. For me, it is not a priority. My background is steeped in hybridity: picture a Yoruba boy with Pidgin as first language whose childhood was spent in the chaos of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. My writing reflects what is most honest to me at that point in time. For instance, I recently wrote a poem with a mixture of English and Xhosa. The music of the stanza written in Xhosa made sense only when I left it untranslated. The direction of any work I undertake is dictated by its music. But of course, the music can also lead me to “Ancestry.”
