Storytelling is what I was born to do — Faith Moyosore Agboola

By Flourish Joshua

Faith Moyosore Agboola’s poetry has a raw, sensitive, and honest quality to it. There’s something remarkable about the way she writes lines that tell strong and moving stories while also being interwoven with multiple poetic devices. During poetry performances, she has an eerie and spellbinding way of delivering her lines. It has a genuine feel about it. When she performs poetry, it doesn’t feel like experiencing amazing writing and performance alone; it feels like she becomes the character and we are sucked into a scene in the story.

Prior to our conversation, I had spent time studying her performances at various events over the previous months. From her assertive performance at Kokopelli Tales and Cocktails that got the women in the audience reacting, to her advocacy for equality at GT Bank’s You Read, to her portrayal of love at True Flutter’s Love and Poetry Night, and most recently, her performance about the Japa wave, a deeply relatable poem for Nigerians at the Netherlands Embassy, she has established herself as a talent to watch. It is not a surprise that she was recently nominated for the 2023 APVA Awards, Rising Talent of the Year Spoken Word. This interview is aimed at exploring the creativity, talent and authenticity embodied by Faith Moyosore Agboola, a performance poet, writer, cultural organiser and Chevening Scholar.

Why do you write?
In secondary school, I began writing because I had ingested so many stories that my own stories with an African spin were yearning to be shared. I saw it as a hobby and a great way for me to pass the time after school, so I spent hours at night writing fiction on notebooks which I shared with my classmates. It was also a fantastic motivator for an 11-year-old to see my peers pay to read each new daily episode.

I wrote in university because of a creative writing course I took; it reawakened a long-buried dream of mine, as I had put writing on hold after secondary school to seek a career in media or history but once the course was over, my writing was over too. I started writing after I graduated because I was going through a heartbreak and couldn’t talk about it with anyone. It was one of those situations that people had warned you about, but your pride wouldn’t let you meet them after because of the risk of hearing “I told you so”.

Now, I write because it is my purpose. Storytelling is what I was born to do. Writing is a branch of it. I write to use my stories to heal hearts, lift minds and spark up important conversations about social issues. So many things will be lost, so many people will be lost, and so many issues will vanish; stories are a way for me to wrap them into a timeless gift that allows people to witness and experience them in ways that make them feel heard, understood, or inspired to act.

Why performance poetry?
While writing for the page is amazing and will always be the foundation of all my storytelling efforts, many people miss out on the wealth of knowledge that has been written. With performance poetry, they do not need to go digging through dozens of books to find light, I become the light. My tongue becomes the lighter and my dramatisation, the gasoline. I bring the stories they need to them, burning with a fire, that brings into view issues they have been oblivious to in the darkness of society. Performance poetry is short, straight to the point and if you do it well, you hold say 3-5 minutes of someone’s 24 hours in a day. And in those short minutes, you can shift something in them that might change their lives forever. I have performed poetry at events and weeks later got a message from someone who shared with me that a certain line from my performance is what helped them get through a mental health crisis. I performed at the Netherland Embassy this month and after my performance, I was engaged in so many conversations that spanned hours just off a 3-minute poem. There is also the power of poetry to spur decision and reach busy people. A person can hear a social ills poem and make a decision they’ve been putting off for years. Performance poetry takes the strength of writing, borrows from the skill of acting and thrives off the urgency of a well-told thriller. It’s a powerful art form that demands attention which is a gift in this fast paced busy world we currently live in.

You have mastered the technique of writing poetry in the first person using dialogues, imagery, and metaphors, as well as performing your poems in a way that immerses your audience in heavy emotions. Does your work feel personal because it is, or is it merely a talent that you have mastered?

My work is personal, regardless of if I’m writing about my own experience or the experiences of others. My writings are frequently written from my point of view, describing how I see the world and experience society. My poetry frequently emerges from one of three places. A personal experience, someone else’s experience, or a discovery made via research or observation. Sometimes it is just one of them, but most of the time it is a combination of all three. There are words in my poems that are personal to me, but there are other lines that I wish I could have said to someone going through something I witnessed, and so they nagged at me until they became a poem for many others in similar situations. When I create a poem, I consider the best methods to communicate the story to fulfil my goals because all of my poems serve a purpose. Either it’s relatability for those going through difficult situations, raising awareness, encouraging introspection, or spotlighting subjects that are generally overlooked. My choice of words are determined by my goal, and the narrative and subject dictate how I express myself. I never want somebody to listen to me and see me as simply a good poet; I want them to see the subject of the story, to be taken into a different world, and to forget that I am a poet.

I saw your “A Black Woman” poetry performance, which was commissioned by Norfolk Black History Month, a UK-based organisation. It is a profound work. Your use of an Ankara’s lifecycle as a metaphor for black women’s lives was brilliant. Walk me through the creation of this international collaboration.

First off, the producer of the project, Kormbat, is someone I have worked with before. My first poetry audiovisual was a collaboration with him. We also worked on Healing Under Water and have worked on a couple of other creative projects together. He is currently based in the UK, so when he was brought on board the project, he was asked to recommend an African female poet, and he recommended me. The Norfolk Black History Month team saw my works, fell in love with them and commissioned me.

I got their email in October 2022. It was a delightful feeling. The work was released in March 2023. This was a 6-month creation process. I was given a narrative and shown pictures and videos. The poem was originally intended just for showcasing black women’s fashion. So while going through some of the visual elements they already had, I noticed that most of the women in the pictures and videos were dressed in Ankara fabrics. You can see this in the final video. I remember that night vividly. I googled the creation process of Ankara fabrics and for some reason, it felt symbolic of the journey of a Black Woman. I reflected on the different bending and twisting we go through from birth till maturity. It made me think about my journey and the journey of many women who have had to deal with the negative effects of gender inequality. And so the final work became not just a celebration of black fashion but a piece celebrating and advocating for black women while recognizing Ankara, an important fabric to our culture as a people.

You performed a gripping 6-minute poem titled Equals at the 2022 Lagos International Poetry Festival which was well-received. The poem is a well-written account of equality across multiple facets. I particularly resonate with a lot of it but the lines “women begging to be saved from the weight of their collapsing careers while the men around them only want to help them out of the rubble if their loins are used as ladders” and “everyone else is trying to break glass ceilings but we are blocked from viewing the glass because of our gender, race or disability” are such powerful use of poetic devices. Tell me about the inspiration for this poem, and the writing process.

Thank you for the warm comments. I have always been passionate about equality. Always cared about people in society who don’t get the chance that other people have due to various discriminatory reasons. I had written about it, spoken about it and had conversations about it but had never written a poem about it yet. Last year I got commissioned to perform at TEDx Alausa and the theme of the event was Equals. Their email specifically stressed that they do not want me to create a poem that only deals with equality within the context of gender. This was very much aligned with how I thought about equality. I think about equality in the context of all aspects, gender, disability, socioeconomic status, race, nationality etc. So getting that brief was the nudge I needed to finally create a piece about something I have always cared about.

I am a woman, I am African, I am neurodivergent. All of which have enabled me to witness discrimination and inequalities firsthand. The stanza about women which you quoted that line from was inspired by a personal experience. As the founder of a literary organisation, I have had moments where people asked to speak to my “Oga” or referred to me as sir when sending an email or pitching for something because they couldn’t fathom that a woman would run such an impactful organisation.

Speaking about being a founder. Aside from making art, you’ve worked behind the scenes in cultural organising and developing opportunities for writers. Tell me about your motivation for doing this and why it is so important to you.

My journey into cultural organising began at age 19. I was a fresh graduate with writing dreams but no clue on how to bring them to life. I needed an organisation that understood where I was coming from as a person and spoke to me in a language I understood but also showcased the work I was putting out. Most of the platforms I came across tended to focus on more established voices and did not give enough room for beginners like me. So creating The African Writers was a natural progression, born out of my experience, the experience of other young writers I became friends with and observations in the industry. Convening events is also an offshoot of that. Art in this country is most often a labour of love especially for beginners. Except you have a high paying job, a thriving business or you are from a rich home, creating art here is expensive and is often a luxury. Most artists I know are juggling creating art with other career paths. There is a lot of discouragement that comes from well meaning people. Even loved ones at first were concerned about my artistic pursuits. And so the two African Writers Meet events were convened to teach writers how to make a living from their art and build a thriving career in it.

I believe that the strength of artists and the success of artists is strongly tied to the structures that enable them to thrive. If there are no structures, no organisers, no producers, many artists who could have achieved major artistic feats will not be born. When I perform at events, I meet different writers, who share with me how winning a TAW slam, participating in a challenge we organised or applying for an opportunity shared at The African Writers changed their lives. Also giving artists that initial validation too is a crucial part of what we do. I remember actively promoting Oyinkan Braithwaite’s novel Thicker Than Water in 2017 and passionately pushing it because of how much I believed in it. So seeing it eventually get acquired and become My Sister The Serial Killer and having her become a speaker at African Writers Meet 2018 was a full-circle moment for me. Inspiring, educating, promoting and supporting more artists is how we become an industry. An industry with only 5-10 thriving artists is not an industry. Having a large pool of artists making waves is how we grow and get taken seriously. I am more about collective growth than individual growth.

What can we expect from you artistically moving forward?
More performances from me for sure. In Nigeria, festival season is fast approaching and I’m thrilled to showcase some of my new work. Most importantly, my debut spoken word poetry EP will be released in November. I am excited about that. I bared my soul in it, and let’s just say it’ll be an emotional rollercoaster. Finally, more experimentation with my work. I will be curating more poetry experiences and releasing more poetry audiovisuals. I am also looking at exploring more international collaborations for my work as both an artist and as a cultural organiser.