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By Damiete Braide
Few Nigerian writers embody the convergence of professional expertise and literary creativity as convincingly as Obinna Chilekezi. An accomplished insurance practitioner, educator, librarian, poet and storyteller, Chilekezi has built a remarkable career that bridges the analytical world of risk management with the imaginative realm of literature. His writings, rooted in African experiences and enriched by his travels, explore universal themes of love, loss, nature, identity, hunger and resilience, offering readers a profound reflection on the human condition. Based in Lagos, Nigeria, Chilekezi has earned recognition both within and beyond Africa for his contributions to literature and insurance.
His published poetry collections, Songs of a Stranger at the Smiling Coast, My Gambian and Other Poems, and Calligramme, have received critical acclaim, with Songs of a Stranger at the Smiling Coast earning multiple nominations at the 2021 APAPA Book Awards in South Africa. Beyond poetry, he is the author of the short story collection One Penny Ring, while one of his insurance textbooks won the prestigious African Insurance Organisation (AIO) Book Award in 2016.
In this interview with Damiete Braide,, Chilekezi reflects on the fascinating intersection of insurance and literature, the influence of librarianship on his intellectual development, the inspirations behind his poetry and fiction, and his enduring belief that reading remains the foundation upon which every successful writer is built.
You have successfully built careers in both insurance and literature. How have these two seemingly different worlds influenced each other in your life and writing?
Insurance and literature treat the same subject which is existence from different angles or perspectives. I will add that, while insurance identifies risk and tries to proffer solutions on how risk could be mitigated through risk transfer mechanisms, literature, on the other hand, attempts to mirror human existence, the ups and downs and how the downs could be catered for through all means of which insurance is no exclusion.
I will say that my understanding of both worlds have impacted strongly on my writings; especially in my collection of stories titled One Penny Ring, which is my first attempt in this genre. It is a work that I attempted at mirroring in society from a broader and historical perspective than what poetry writing could have allowed me to do.
Your poetry collections, particularly Songs of a Stranger at the Smiling Coast and My Gambian and Other Poems, draw from cross-cultural experiences. What inspired these works, and what lasting impact did The Gambia have on your creative outlook?
All my life, I have been a lover of nature. I will say that it was in The Gambia that I started valuing nature more than ever. You know as young people we go to the river to fetch water and that is it, then you travel to come across people who will leave their homes to travel miles and miles to see rivers and its flora and fauna. With this you will start to appreciate what you have ignored in the past – mother nature.
Incidentally, My Gambia and Other Poems was my first work in The Gambia. When I submitted it to my first publisher in the UK, the editor I was working with insisted that I should turn up two other works since I was not known, that was in 2015. It was stranger than fiction to get such a request from an editor. But that was it. The next year, during my visit to The Gambia, I decided to work on the two other collections with Calligramme being the first, and, later, I worked on Songs Of A Stranger At The Smiling Coast which later became the first to be published and the most successful today. It had three nominations from the APAPA award in 2021 in South Africa for the best international poetry book, best cover design and another I cannot remember now. Although I did not win in any of them I was equally delighted with such recognition. Moreover, Songs Of A Stranger got better reviews as a work of literature and I can say I am proud of that work.
My latest work, A Love that Faded Away With Distant Cries, can be seen as an extension of Songs of A Stranger. I look forward to it doing better than Songs of A Stranger.
As someone with a background in librarianship, how has your training shaped your reading habits, research process, and approach to writing poetry and fiction?
I will say in the library school, then I cannot talk of now, we were trained to be readers. You were told that librarians had read over five million books and things like that. This way we were made to be readers and encouraged to be like those librarians. I studied sciences in secondary school. If I had not been able to pass mathematics (which I later corrected) that sent me to study, first, information science and later library science, I would not have gone to the library school. Any time, any day, I will say that I am proud to have studied library science. I think and I can proudly say that it has greatly influenced all that I do as a person. That is the truth!
Come to think of it, we were told then that we were trained to be Jack of all trades and master of all! That is the library school then for you.
Your poems and stories have been published in Nigeria and internationally. How do you balance writing for a local audience while appealing to readers across different cultures?
I tried to be Afrocentric in my writing in the first place. I believe that African writings have a major place in world literature. This is why I do not feel that an African writer should worry himself much about his foreign readers. I may be wrong on this position. But this is how I feel.
Poetry often reflects the deepest emotions and observations of a writer. What themes consistently find their way into your work, and why do they matter to you?
A tough one, I can say. Emotion, and emotions! Can I say that I try to reflect the things I see? At times, the pains that I had gone through. I think this could be it. Nevertheless, my writings have attempted to mirror love, nature, sufferings and the rest of it. I will like to make a reference from SIM Now, a South African publication that did a little review on my writings, which state and I quote “When we begin to reflect upon hunger, I draw upon the words of provocative Nigerian poet Obinna Chilekezi, who filled with his own descriptions and impressions started writing poems at an early age.
Chilekezi personalizes hunger. ‘“Hunger befriends the land / The land befriends hunger,”’ he writes in “Food comes first”. In ‘“Not just this change”’, he writes, ‘“Hunger has swallowed our land whole”. I find it compelling how Chilekezi uses an experience like hunger, which involves want and emptiness, to personify a glutton with a ravishing appetite. I also find his metaphor rather unsettling”. I think this speaks much of my writings, especially my poems.
My English teacher in the secondary school at Ife Secondary School, the late Mr Dominic Nwachukwu [Nnanyi Dom] would say then, “it is an Axiom, yes self-evident truth”!
Your collection Calligramme has an intriguing title. What inspired the book, and what unique literary or artistic approach does it embody?
The title is just a reflection of the picturesque nature of most of the poems in the work. Although I try to draw with words in my writings, this collection is a good reflection of this. Little wonder in one of my collections I titled the work as “I want to paint with words”. That’s the reason for the title Calligramme.
Many writers struggle to balance demanding careers with creative pursuits. How have you sustained your passion for writing while working as an insurance practitioner?
I like the words you used which is passion for writing while practising insurance. I will start by acknowledging this fact that I have been a reader all my life. My mother forced me to become a reader which would form a story for another day. Readers are writers, too! This is by the way. I will say that I try to create time to read and the writing stuff comes in between both activities.
How do your personal experiences, whether from travel, professional life, or everyday encounters, find expression in your poems and stories?
I believe every literary work is biographical. The difference between work from another is the degree or percentage of such personal experience in the different literary works. My work cannot be an exception. To borrow the words of Kola Omotosho, it is Faction we write, which is the marriage of facts and fiction in a literary work. Yes, the travels, the disappointments, love and love lost all find their ways in my writing.
What advice would you give to young writers who want to build lasting literary careers while pursuing professions outside the creative arts?
I will say that they should be young readers first and foremost! There is no other way out. Also, there is a need for them to look for outlets to get published first like journals, anthologies, newspapers and other serials. This will expose them to working with experienced editors. Working with editors has enhanced my writings and I will suggest the same to them. Rushing to get self-published may not help them.
