Divorce, anger made me a poet -Wana Udobang

Udobang

Nigerian poet, Wana Udobang, has disclosed how she came to be a poet during a CNN International African Voices episode.

According to her, poetry helped her express herself during hardships she faced.

“What inspired me to become a poet, I think it started … as a child, I was going through a lot of difficulty with my parents getting divorced and then general teenage angst. And for some weird reason, I found that just writing them down kind of helped … poetry for me was catharsis and therapy … and I found that every single time I wrote something down, it just released me in some way, shape or form.”

She didn’t realise she was writing poetry until it was pointed out by her best friend. “My best friend saw a couple of things I had written and said, ‘Dude, this is like poetic.’ And it just planted the seeds of something inside me. And she bought me a journal, so I had to stop writing on scraps of paper. I think those were like the early beginnings of it. And I became more conscious of the idea of poetry.”

While at university in the UK, she was inspired to transform her poetry into a performance. “It was my second year at university. I was watching stuff on the internet. And then I was on YouTube and this lady comes up called Bassey Ikpi. She's Nigerian, and she does this poem called Homeward. So, I think that moment, like watching her like really connect, and it was like, oh, wow, like, so you can write stuff and you can perform.”

Udobang’s success has seen her perform at different arts festivals around the world.

But she chooses Lagos as the best place to be a poet.

“I think I feel like if you're an artist or you’re a writer especially, Lagos is definitely one of the ultimate spaces to be in. And the reason is because Lagos is an assault on the senses. I always say I love the city so much. It’s an assault in the sense that it’s a theatre, a live theatre. I mean, there's just storytelling, stories and storytelling is just breathing around you.”

And on her future, she said she’s currently putting together her third album.

African Voices is sponsored by Globacom. It airs Fridays 1130 WAST on CNN International; Saturdays 0130 WAST, 1330 WAST and 1730 WAST; Sundays 0500 WAST, 1030 WAST and 2100 WAST; Mondays 0630 WAST; and Wednesdays 1230 WAST.