S3, E6 Adukeh

Adukeh is a poet based in London, England. Her poetry is influenced by her faith. The episode was recorded on the 9 October 2023. 

Insta: @adukeh_speaks

Podcast details:
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Transcript

0:15

Welcome listeners to Artist Tales, a podcast that features and celebrates artists from different walks of life. I'm your host, Heather Martin, and in this episode, I'm speaking with Adukeh, a London-based poet. Welcome, Adukeh. Hi. So tell me a little bit about how you got into becoming a poet. Well, from a young age, I can remember writing poems. I've always sort of been good at English. I always loved English at school. and I loved like analysing poems and I found one of my old poems in one of my old school books, it was probably about 10. It wasn't very sophisticated at all but yeah I just liked writing poetry and then I think as a teenager I kind of used it to like process my teenage angst and erotions so yeah so I used to write a lot yeah to process things. I think I was probably a bit depressed as a teenager. But that was my way of expressing. And I wasn't good at expressing how I felt. Poetry, I would write poetry. But yeah, I enjoyed poetry. I enjoyed English and writing. I was always reading books. I used to go to the library in the summer holidays and just get loads of books out and read. So I was quite bookish through my teenage years. That's when I started. And I think even at uni, I remember writing them and then sending my sister a poem. And she was like, oh, what do you think of this poem? And it's like. hoping she wouldn't know it was me, and of course she knew it was me. So I think I wrote, yeah, I wrote a lot at uni. I wasn't, yeah, I wasn't that happy, sort of, bit depressed. I was quite depressed at uni. But yeah, I just started writing poetry then. And then probably, I didn't really share it with anyone for quite a while, probably mid-20s or so, not 20s, maybe later than that. But yeah, I threw church, I think I organized an open mic night with some people at church. And that's when I started, that's when I shared. That was, I think that's the first time I got up on the stage and shared my work with people. So that was probably about 15, 16 years ago. But I did it that once. And then because my poems were quite personal, I found, well, some of them were quite personal. I found it quite painful. So it was a sort of weird mix. I enjoyed being on the stage. I enjoyed sharing my poems, but emotionally I don't think I was ready to do that because I had really processed. some of the emotions behind it. So yeah. And how did people respond to you when you were, certainly in that first open mic, how did people respond to you? People really enjoyed my poems. I think people, I think it's a bit of a paradox. I don't know if it's actually a paradox, is the right word, but people responded really well. I think what I found is that almost like the more you share of yourself, the more you connect with your audience. So. when your poems are more personal, people kind of receive it as a gift, they receive it as something that you've given them and that actually kind of bonds you to them or kind of, yeah, you are actually giving something of yourself to people and I think people really connect with you and then they really appreciate that. So yeah, so I think, yeah, people, I can't quite remember but I'm sure people said things like, oh yeah, thanks for sharing that or you know, that was quite brave, you know, to do that or, but I get that a lot. that all of people really connect with it, then yeah, it really goes deep. So, yeah, so I found that I think as I share my poems, I do get that a lot. And it's an amazing feeling when you stand up in front of several people, like 50, 60 people, and they're kind of really, you can feel them listening to you and you can feel them hanging on your words. And there's this sort of energy that happens when you stand in front of a crowd. It's like you're giving to them and they're giving to you. So I really love that feeling. I love that ability to share one of my experiences or share my life or share something that is personal to me and share it with people and people receive it as a gift. I think that's very powerful. And would you prefer performing your poems or would you prefer writing them and sharing them that way? I think I enjoy performing them more. I think it's interesting, I think when I perform, you hear the tone of my voice, I can put emotion in it, I can put emphasis in it, I can put pauses in it to tell the story as well as the words. And I quite like the performance element of it and whereas on the page, you've got more time to reflect on the words and what they look like on the page and the deeper meaning and all of that. So I think... I think I like the stage because it's immediate. You can communicate more, the poem more, about how you want to, what you want to say. I think the audience can feel even what you're saying or the emotion behind it or, whereas on the page, it's kind of open to the world, it's open to the world and there's anybody can interpret things differently. People can put more of their own interpretation into it. So I don't think I prefer one than, I love writing. And I think some... And it's been a bit of a journey for me as well, trying to work out, not work out, you know, because I think I kind of quite organically wrote poems to start with. And then I took part in a festival called the Unveiling Festival, which was a Christian arts festival. And it had a different theme and the way it was set up was to apply to be an artist. And then every month, all of us, and it was different disciplines, the musicians, the painters, the comedians one year, but. What we'd do is we'd all come together once a month, like eight months before the festival, and meet up every month and talk about how we were getting on with our art. We might just go for a walk, you know, we just connected with each other and talked about what we were doing and how we were getting on with producing work for the festival. So then I had to write to a theme, then I had a deadline. So, you know, it was kind of like I had to sort of work in a way which I wasn't used to and try and find a framework for my poems. because it was so wide, although you had a theme, it was so wide what you could do, I kind of had to put myself into it. Well, this is what I did anyway. I kind of put my, I gave myself a bit more of a restriction, so I kind of looked up different um, Pareto forms and I think I did one in a sort of sonnet format so that it was fixed and that was good. And then I think I did two or three. I think the other one I, it was more free form and then I... kind of had some more performative elements to it. So it was nice to play about, but also I gave myself a disciplined time to go somewhere to sit down to write them. So, and at first it was, yeah, it was an interesting process because you kind of like you're coming from so wide, but after a while that kind of a bit of discipline helped me write some good poems. So through that process, I learned that I can write in a structure and... actually giving myself a bit of discipline in how I like just give myself space to write and regularly write or regularly work on the means so I can produce better work in a way. And how would you normally write? I mean that sounds like a particular framework and you manage to work within it but outside of that how would you normally write poems? I don't know. I think before I would probably journal. I journal quite a lot and I think when you know, because I'm just reflecting on things or so I would write then. And I think a lot, I think at the beginning, I don't know about now, but I think a lot used to come through like I'm quite into like prayer and meditation. So sometimes during the prayer time, I'd be reading or thinking or praying about something. But in the silence, like I quite like being in silence and sort of meditating. And I felt God gives me sort of things or ideas or phrases or things just jump out to me. And so. that might be the starting point. Or yeah, I think I do journal a lot. And in those kind of still times, sometimes it's almost like some of my poems are kind of like conversations with God, or me trying to put into words what those experiences are. Or if I'm meditating on something in the Bible, like some of my poems are more Christian or overtly Christian, like meditating on scripture. Sometimes I'll get a picture or like I'm trying to. I think I quite often try to put emotions into words or feelings into words or working through questions about things. So in my kind of space, meditative sort of prayer space, there's a whole range of things like the journaling is part of that, kind of being in silence is part of that, like reading scripture is part of that. Or sometimes it's, I think I'm quite, I think I did the highly sensitive person test. I don't think I'm officially highly sensitive, but. I am quite sensitive to things in general in life and emotions, so things that are going on in the world or questions that I have, sometimes they'll turn into poems or, you know, if I read something interesting like that's going on in the news. And I think I realised that like my poetry's kind of changed, and at the beginning it was more like trying to understand my emotions or process emotions and questions. And then I think... as time's gone on, trying to widen what I write about or try to have a wider range of things that I would write about. And so, yeah, so I mean, I write a poem. One poem that I wrote was called I'm Not Ashamed to Shine, which was, it was really kind of a poem to myself and it was kind of inspired by, like I've always been, I'm always really interested in creativity and where it comes from and yeah, inspiration and just the idea of creativity. So... It was inspired by Amy Winehouse, her death. And I kind of followed her. She was about my age. She wasn't local, but yeah, I don't know. I just grew up with her on TV and around. And when she died, I just was very struck by the fact that so many people felt they'd been robbed of her talent. And the idea that her talent didn't just belong to her, it belonged to everybody else as well. And then there's a quote by, I think her name's Marilyn Robinson, which is the one about. Our greatest fear isn't that we're not powerful enough. Our greatest fear is that we are powerful. And we think, who am I to shine? Who am I? And then it goes, who are you not to shine? Who are you not to share your talent? So those two ideas collided and I kind of wrote a poem, but it's almost a kind of my manifesto to myself about not being ashamed to shine and like share your talent with the world and all that kind of stuff. So that was just, you know, that was things that I was just thinking about. And... Yeah, so the inspiration comes from different places. And now I try to read more other poets and get inspiration from just reading a lot of other people's poetry, seeing how they write, doing poetry workshops and things like that. I think I kind of work on my craft a lot more now than I did before. But yeah, I'm always trying to take different things and prompts and so it's kind of changed over time, but yeah. I just try to keep open and keep practising and just see what comes to me really. And I have phases where I don't write anything at all, but I think I did. I think it's only the last six or seven years that I've started really putting me more and doing more poetry and performing. I kind of did the odd thing here and there, but a friend asked me to, he was a musician, asked me to do some poetry at her launch event and then from there I sort of did my open mic, so did the festivals. started doing workshops and yeah, it just evolved from there. Then I met another friend called Len Ise, a poet, and we started doing projects together. So we did a series of workshops on grief. It was just after COVID, during COVID. So we'd both lost our parents about the same time, even though we didn't really know each other at the point at the time. So we'd both written poetry about grief. And then, so we did a sort of music and poetry event where we read our poems and... friend kind of played music in between, it was like to create sort of a reflective space to help people process. We did another one where we had a couple of psychologists and a couple of people who sort of had quite a major bereavement. We did a sort of panel session talking about grief and creativity and how you can use creativity to help you process grief. And then I think the last one was a poetry workshop where we kind of looked at using poems and poetry to process. Yeah, quite interested in creativity and healing. So it sounds like a lot of the subject matter you're covering has changed over time, but it's touching on things that can be more serious, things that are sometimes more difficult for people to deal with. Yeah, I think I went through quite a difficult time. Yeah, I think I'd say I'd experience trauma, I think, it's taken me a long time to really work through it all. And I found, yeah, writing poetry was helpful. And I think my process, my spiritual process of talking to God and experiencing God's healing was something I wanted to share as well. So it's kind of like the two things together. And I think, yeah, so yeah, they are, I think my poems are quite deep. Some of them are quite deep. They're not all really deep, but yeah, quite a lot of them are quite emotional, maybe. or dealing with heavy subjects. But yeah, try to balance it out. I don't intentionally, you know, it just is what it is. It's just sort of where you are at the time. So, but yeah, I find that people connect with it and I think that people, it is life, you know, we go through painful things and I think just sharing that, yeah, one sort of thing sort of like embracing, embracing the difficulty and embracing the adversity rather than trying to avoid it and... run from it. For me it's also the message that God does heal. God can heal people's hearts and you know you can experience that through God and I've experienced it and just sharing that and it's not and it's also kind of not in a kind of it's not always in a sort of dramatic kind of way but in a gentle that sort of gentle side of God that I think well that's been my experience so that's what I share you know so some of it is that some of it's just my conversations uh with God really. But yeah, there's a mixture. I've got a poem about, it's based about a bus journey to somewhere I live, to somewhere else. I've got, you know, I write about what interests me, or like nature, or yeah. And I think as I sort of try to improve my craft, read other people's stuff, I see what other kinds of things other people write about, and what you can do with poetry, and where you can go with it. I think that inspires me more. And I think I was quite inspired by, when I was a teenager, I read a lot of Maya Angelou as well. So her poems are quite, she went through quite a lot of trauma. I don't know if you know much about her, but. No, I didn't quite catch the name. Maya Angelou. Oh yes, yeah, she's quite famous, isn't she? Yeah, yeah. I have read a bit, sorry, of her stuff. It's all right, yeah. So I read a lot of her books when I was younger and I was very, I was very, it had quite a deep impact on me, just her story that she had been through so much trauma when she was very young and how she came through it. and lived such a zestful, creative, bold life, and that she was basically self-taught. She went to a library, and she became mute after an assault, assault when she was young, and was mute for several years, and just read loads of books. And she eventually found her, she eventually started talking, but that's kind of what fueled her. in her writing. Well, obviously it had a big influence. But also there were different periods in her life where she needed to do something. Or I think she was a TV producer, or she sort of lagged the job as a TV producer. I think she went on routes or she basically went to the library and taught herself how to do it. Yeah, so that thing of overcoming hard challenges and being able to teach yourself. Almost only think if you just go out and find out how to do it. And her poetry, like her style especially, like, it's very, it's quite animated, it's exuberant. But also her poems are, they are quite sort of deep and transformational, in a way, and inspirational. So yeah, I would say that was quite an influence. On several levels, just her approach to life and overcoming something that most, that a lot of people would think that would scar you for life. And just her... embracing of life and her wisdom. So yeah, she's a big influence. She was a big influence. I don't read much of her stuff now, but even just watching her read her poems is quite inspiring. Yeah. Great. So would you like to read a poem? Not to put you on the spot. I could either do the one I was talking about just now, or I could do one that's a bit more deep. Which one would you feel comfortable with? Either. I'll do the more deep one. Okay, sounds good. Called, he gazes at my ruins. I take a look at this old house and carry out a building inspection. Broken bricks, missing tiles, half-hinged doors and mould. Then he comes and gazes at these ruins. Brick upon broken brick, the caved-in roof with the missing tiles. Sagging frames, clasping half-hinged doors, towering tangled weeds. He gazes at my ruins. Blurred boundaries, bad habits, tender bruises, broken heart. He gazes steadily at these ruins, with compassion and with acceptance, until I gaze at my ruins, broken bricks, missing tiles, half-hinged doors, with compassion and with acceptance. And so I say, for all that's less than perfect, peace. Peace be still. That's really, that's a lovely poem. So thank you for sharing that. Yeah, you're welcome. It sounds like it's taking off in the sense that you're kind of performing more, you're doing some workshops and stuff, which sounds all very positive. I'm just wondering kind of what's next. Well, we're doing, we started an open mic night. We've just done our second one. So we're just going to see where that goes. I think we've got lots of ideas. So we're going to, yeah, we just, we just started doing that, see how that goes. The first two have gone really well. I would like to create a bit of a community, or at least have a regular meetup, that format of people meeting up and working on their work and being accountable. I joined another group that was similar, where it was artists and we kind of set our goals and we'd talk about our work and shared our work with each other. And it was really, really helpful to not be in a silo. And so I'd like to do something like that, especially from the open mic, because we try to encourage people to come and share their gifts. Like for me, standing up that first open mic, although it was a little bit painful and a little bit awkward, it was the first step of kind of where I am today. And I think open mics are good because they're kind of very supportive environments and you can make your mistakes and you don't have to... perfect and you do meet other poets and you meet other people, you meet other artists. And I think I do really enjoy encouraging other people's creativity and encouraging creativity in general. So I'd love to, you know, maybe some people that have come along, you know, they tend to share something and then, you know, meet up regularly and get people just doing the next thing, you know, which might be writing something else and doing one more, you know, because it all just grows, you just keep doing what you're doing. I really remember seeing, I used to be sort of really in awe of lots of other poets. They, and I used to be like, oh, they're so great. I couldn't, you know, I was a bit shy. I was shy, really. And I remember going to see Michaela Coel, like she's quite a famous actor now, which is written, just produced quite a few things. She went on to do acting and writing, but she used to do poetry. And I remember going to one of her things and writing to her, I was like, oh, one day. I'd love to, but you know, I'm too shy. But you know, I just kept doing it and I just kept taking the opportunities that I had. And then my confidence just grew. I'd love to do that for other people. I'd love to create that space for people. So yeah, I think just carrying on doing that and people keep telling me I need to put my poems in a book because I haven't published any of them. So I was going to ask whether you're planning a book? Yeah. So yeah, I think next year I really need to get on to that. I think I at least published the ones that I've already got. So yeah, I'm just being, again, just keep taking steps to share my poetry, because even though I've got a poem that says I'm not ashamed to share, sometimes I am. Not ashamed, but a bit shy to share stuff or be on, you know, make a video or put my face out there. So yeah, just keep moving forward in that look and always, you know, just keep going really. So yeah, nothing concrete, but yeah, there's quite a few things there. So yeah. That's the general direction. So as you're starting to do more open mics, are you starting to find that you're getting a bit of a following? Yeah, I think we're still quite early days. So I think people, I think kind of the majority of people that come in that are people that we know. Although, you know, I'd probably say that 30% are people that see it just advertised and come along. So yeah, so I think, I think I realised that the last one, because people came from so many different places or just other places that I've done poetry over. last few years. So it was nice because it was like oh yeah you know some people were enthusiastic I was like oh that's nice like you know they really wanted to come and see so I think we will I think we're still sort of getting ourselves you know just kind of bedding ourselves down like how are we doing this and organizing ourselves a bit more but yeah hopefully we will hopefully yeah hopefully we'll get a bit more of following and it's good as well because it's giving us them I mean we're feature and stuff, so it's not just us, but it does make you, it kind of sharpens my own sort of practice because one, it's like, you know, some poems I've performed, I've never performed them, kind of digging out some old ones, but they've never been shared. You know, still, I've still got lots of poems that I haven't really shared before. So it's kind of thinking. And I think because I've worked on my practice and sort of a bit more on how to edit them or, you know, how, how to shape them and edit them. I'm kind of working on some mild ones again, kind of going, yeah, looking some mild ones and thinking, oh, let me just rewrite that or, you know, or even just scribbles or scraps of things. And I think, okay, maybe I can rewrite that. Yeah. And as you, you know, as I read more widely and see different forms and different ways you can kind of write poetry or express things that I've got more to pull from in a way. So it keeps you on your toes a bit as well. increase the network, increase the group that you're interacting with or the groups that you're interacting with. What I'm also hearing is you're looking to evolve your practice as well. Yeah, I think I've realized that. Yeah, I'm always interested in proving what I'm doing, how I'm doing it, and also to learn because I think you do start off writing it quite emotively or I did anyway. But there is a craft, there are things, there's principles that make things good. you know, it's, I find that just as fascinating because I like learning and I like studying. So like, I really like reading books about how writers write in general, and then how people, so like Stephen King's book on writing is really good because it's kind of half his life story and half his craft because I think he used to teach poetry and literature. And some of the things, you know, like making space for your writing and like Mary, I always call her Mary Berry, it's not Mary Berry because that's the cook. But what's her name? Mary Oliver. Her book on writing poetry is interesting. She talks about making a date with your writing. And it's like a romance. And if you were seeing somebody, you could say, I'll see you when I feel like it. But you don't say it like you say. You make dates. You make plans to see them regularly. And she's like, it's like that with your work. Just make some regular time. And yeah, and sort of the question of like, how do I know when I'm an artist, when can I call myself an artist, when can I call myself a poet? And I read another book, it was saying, you know, if you write regularly, then you're a writer. It could be as simple as that, but I think for me as well, it took that, the festival that I entered, we had to enter it as an artist, and we had to get, you know, it was very sort of professional and so, and apply, and I had to call myself an artist, I think up till then I hadn't really owned what I was doing. But those things and those questions always come up again when I'm reading and going to things. Like I went to an event by a poet called Roger Robinson and he won the T.S. Eliot Prize for poetry a few years ago. But he's very good, he's on this sort of mission to help people with their creativity and sort of pass on all of his wisdom and help people who are poets and writers improve their craft. So he was again sort of saying again about schedule it, make time for it, prioritize it. But ultimately it's not about, you know, he talked about being more about self mastery, not really for the glory or whatever you get from it, but actually you mastering yourself and your ability to discipline yourself in order to create good writing. And he sort of said, you know, practice is like using a muscle or like going to the gym. You know, you might, you might sort of turn up for your writing and there's nothing coming out that you just keep going and the fact that you're practicing and working on it actually makes you a bit better when you get it. like the flash of inspiration, which is in the beginning you think, oh, that's it, I'm going to get this flash of inspiration and I'm going to write this amazing poem. Sometimes it does happen, but actually it's more about practicing or just setting a time where you can regularly just give yourself space and see what turns up. What I'm hearing from you is that it's kind of an evolution, it evolves over time. And in a way, I guess it's a lifelong journey because you're just working to get better, better and better. Yeah. I see where it takes you because I think, you know, I discovered from doing the festival, it gave me space to experiment. So I did one poem, like I made a film and I did the visuals and then I did some performance, you know, with a sheet and the plate and all these things. But I discovered, you know, you're discovering yourself as an artist as you go along. Like, what do you like? What feels more comfortable? What resonates with people? Learning what resonates with people, what doesn't? And... So like, I think from that, I realized that I do like the performance and as a performer inside of me, I like dramatizing stuff when I'm reading, you know, even if I don't. So I'm still like on that path a bit and yeah, but also with the writing, I enjoy the writing because I like the form on the page and how it looks on the page. So, and the stuff like, well, what area do you focus on? How much do you do when? All those kind of things as you just keep doing it, but you kind of feel your way and... you're more drawn to certain things than others. So I think I really like Caribbean poets. Some of the older, some older Caribbean poets, but even people like Benjamin Vestephanite, there's a sort of rhythm to his poems. There's a bit of a, there's an energy to the way because of the accent, but also I just think it's a kind of, sort of a Caribbean sort of, well, some poets, but you know, there's almost a movement in the, in. in the poems and I really enjoy that. So I take bits of that and I realise that I put that kind of bit of it into my poetry without really realising that it's quite a few Caribbean poets. So yeah, it's just sort of exploring and I just like having time to like to explore these things if I can have time to. But yeah, once you start digging into a field, there's just more and more things open up, more specialisms, more areas. I was looking at something the other day and it was... He was an actor and he was giving tips about poetry performance and he'd taken it from acting. So I did it in four classes at one point. So yeah, it's just interesting. You know, there's so many places to go if you want to find out more and then you can use all these different things and different elements in your work or it just will show up eventually. So, yeah. Thank you, Duké. It's been really interesting speaking to you about your journey as a poet. Good luck with the open mics. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, thanks for having me on. It's nice to reflect. I think I really reflect on it that much, really, so yeah, thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode with Aduke. I hope you enjoyed listening to it. More information about Aduke, including her social media handles, is in the podcast notes. I'd really appreciate it if you could rate and review the podcast in the podcast apps. In the next episode, I speak with Bansri Chandariya, who is a British Indian contemporary photographer and an award-winning filmmaker. Here's a clip of her conversation. My personal tutor, she asked me, what is it that you really resist doing? And I said, on the course, I said it was making a film. So he said, right, that's what you're going to do. So I did an experimental film called Between and it won the audience award. I look forward to you joining me in the next episode.