Servio Gbadamosi: Journalism was my first love, but …

• Servio Gbadamosi, the publisher of Noirledge Publishing, discloses that journalism was his first love
• He also noted that poetry serves as his anchor point, noting that he didn’t choose to become a poet, instead, poetry chose him 
• In the last of a three-part exclusive interview with TheRadar, Gbadamosi shared the next steps for him and his publishing firm

What inspired your preference and love for poetry?

I don’t think I woke up one day and decided that I was going to be a poet. I think poetry is more like a calling. You don’t choose to be a poet; poetry chooses you. At least that’s how I choose to look at it at this point, when I consider my own journey, because I didn’t want to be a poet or anything. I just wanted to be a journalist who knows it all. But somehow, I felt I could write poetry. I came to poetry by way of music, hip-hop and rap music. I found out about the beat generation in America and that it was the precursor to what we call hip-hop now.

I came to poetry by way of performance. And sometimes when I listen to these debates and conversations in the Nigerian literary community about page poets and performance poets, I just laugh because this dichotomy that you people are trying to create and say you are on one side of the divide, you are on the other side of the divide, my whole writing career has been a rupture. They say performance poets can’t write. Then they say page poets cannot perform and all of those things. And I say, ‘Nah, I started out as a rapper.’

I started out as a rapper. I started out as a performance poet. That was at least my first fascination with poetry besides reading it. So, I started actively writing rap songs. But at some point, I looked at it and asked myself, ‘This rap thing, this hip-hop thing, you sure say na wetin you wan do be this?’ I am somewhat conservative and like to stay in my small corner of the world and just do whatever work I have been called to from that corner. Then I found myself writing more poetry.

Poetry is not something that I do all the time, but it’s something that I have not been able to leave. I can walk away for weeks or months, but I always come back to it. It’s like that anchor; I can sway this way, sway that way, do this, do that, write a book, edit a book, write an essay, tear the essay apart, write a story, forget the story, here and there, but I would always come back to poetry. It helps me make sense of reality. It helps me make sense of humanity. It helps me make sense of the world. When I even think of ideas and how to express them, expressing them in poetry comes to me more naturally. It’s the default style or genre of writing that I find myself returning to every now and then. I didn’t choose poetry; I think it sort of chose me.

The themes that are dominant in some of your works are about everyday African life. How do you go about getting all of that together?

Well, I am living life; I experience the good, the bad, the ugly like every other person who is alive. And some of these experiences resonate across; other people are also able to connect with those experiences. But I am not even concerned about other people most times when I am creating poetry. Most times, I am recollecting those emotions and recollecting those experiences in a somewhat tranquil state and I am trying to make sense of them. I am trying to recollect them. I am trying to document them and I am grateful that when people come across those works, they are like ‘Ah. I like this. I like that.’ And I am like ‘Ah. So, I am not alone.’

Poetry helps me feel that sense of community that I can be here and create something and somebody, who I will probably never even meet in my life, and I can recount that experience in a way that resonates with that person. And the language is always beautiful. That’s one of the attractions of poetry, that you are not just talking languidly. That you are not serving me a tasteless blend or mix of words. It is something that has beauty in and of itself. It is more like when you see a beautiful woman, or when you see a handsome man, or you see a beautiful car or a beautiful building; you can say you don’t like it, but you can’t deny that this is beautiful. So, you can say you don’t like poetry, you don’t enjoy it and co, but you can’t deny its beauty. Look at the words; not just what they say. What they say is another thing, but the words, the arrangement, the usage of those words, there is no other style of writing that presents that kind of beauty to you. Maybe the closest to it may be music, but of course, music is poetry put to a rhythm. I just enjoy poetry. I enjoy it, I read it, I write it. Of course, I read and write other things too, but it is like my comfort zone, my go-to solace.

Are you considering doing more of other kinds of literary writing?

I have done quite a number of other writings. I just think that I have not gotten to a place where I am that confident and bold enough to let the world see some of them. I have done a few stories that have been published. Well, my essays, not quite. I have not been that courageous to share them. But I think that at some point, as I grow older, I will get into that aspect or age of mastery regarding these other styles of writing and I will feel more confident and be able to share them more willingly with the world. But for now, I am just enjoying my poetry. That’s the best I have to offer right now.

Servio Gbadamosi says he didn’t choose to be a poet but poetry chose him. Photo credit: Noirledge Publishing

Do you have any plans of going back to journalism, as that was your first interest?

I don’t know. When I think of journalism now, whether it is broadcast, online, or print, I always want to circle back to what my initial motivation for wanting to be a journalist was, rather than dwell on my training as a journalist. What was my motivation? To know a bit about everything. So, what I do now, does it allow me to know a bit about everything? I’d say a big yes; it allows me to know about everything. I read all sorts of manuscripts about all sorts of themes and topics; things that if I were not in this line of work, I would never have picked up most of those things in my life. But I read these things, I ruminate on them, I seek ways of improving on them and making them better. Beyond just making those things better, they are making me better, too.

I’d say that journalism, yes, it’s the root, it’s the genesis, it is what has brought me to where I am now, but I think that I am in a very happy place; a happy place that still allows me to stick to me original agenda of getting to know a bit about everything and being able to deploy that knowledge and pass it on to future generations. I think writing and publishing allow me to do that. Maybe journalism in the aspect of being more involved in digital content creation, new media practices. Maybe I will be more inclined to do more of that as the year rolls by, but in the strictest and traditional sense of it, I don’t see myself coming back. 

What are the future plans for Noirledge?

Noirledge has done quite a good work. It’s been doing some good work; it has gotten some recognition, but we have not even started. The goal is to publish more and more bold stories that matter; matter for their boldness, matter for their telling. Bold stories, not just that the world needs to listen to, but that we have to make the world listen to. Yes, we are doing this now in Nigeria, but of course, I can’t wait for the days when we will be able to do that at the continental and international levels.

Also, I think that we are watching the way that the publishing and the creative industries on a global scale are evolving and we are going to be part of that evolution. Yes, we are known as publishers now, but I am confident that in the years to come, we will evolve into the many possibilities that the publishing and creative industries globally afford us.

Tell us about the name, ‘Noirledge.’

Noirledge is a fusion of ‘knowledge’ and the word ‘black,’ so ‘black knowledge. ‘Noir’ is the French word for black. The name in itself is creative. We were toying with what to call our company. It used to be this and that, but it has evolved from other lives into what we now call Noirledge. The easiest way to explain what Noirledge means is to say it is black knowledge; African-based knowledge and everything.

If you look at our logo, it has the elephant’s tusks in a circle in the globe. And that is a deliberate thing because the elephant is the repository of knowledge. In the family of elephants, it is the matriarch that takes them on their journey through every community, through every place that the elephant wants to go. If you want a family of elephants to go into disarray, the female elephant that leads them, take it out of circulation and the others would not be able to find their way. So, she is the costly custodian of memory that never forgets. If you did evil to it 20 years ago, if it sees you now, you have changed, the elephant has changed, but it will still remember you.

It is also an allusion and reference to the wealth of history and the preservation of that history, and the continued deployment and reinvention of that history, of that culture, of that knowledge. So, Noirledge is a lot of things. It means so much to us. It is a dear darling baby that we have nurtured through the years and I have had the good fortune of working with very good people. So many people have passed through this place over the years that we have been operating. And one of the biggest blessings I am grateful for is the good opportunity and good fortune of being able to work with those people and they are doing tremendous good in different sectors that they are in. These are people, most of them even had no idea what publishing was when they came here. But they come here, they spend a couple of years and they get better and they go on to do bigger exploits in the world. 

Piracy goes on in active connivance with people who are supposed to check it – Servio Gbadamosi

Meanwhile, TheRadar earlier reported that Servio Gbadamosi, the publisher of Noirledge Publishing, said piracy goes on in active connivance with the people who are supposed to check it.

Gbadamosi also stated that the journey to building a viable and sustainable creative industry in Nigeria and Africa hasn’t begun.