Sillerman prize winner tells of his love of words

Clifton Gachagua spends all his time constructing sentences to form poems, scripts, novels and blog (thedrumsofshostakovich.wordpress.com).

This winner of the inaugural Sillerman Prize for African Poetry 2013 has no regrets for his obsession with words. Even when going on holiday, a poetry book would be tucked away in his luggage.

“I am not so sure when I started exactly, maybe some time in my teens, the odd love poem here and there, but I did not get into it seriously until I was an adult and at the university,” he says in an interview with this writer.

“It is a matter of survival and living, a way of making sense out of the world around me.”

Last year you won the inaugural Sillerman Prize for African Poetry for your book The Madman at Kilifi. How did you hear about the competition?

From a lot of emails from the African Poetry Book Fund (APBF) and friends. Kwame Dawes, the editor, will be at the Storymoja Hay Festival this year to introduce more poets to the work APBF is doing. Tell as many poets as possible.

How far have you come in getting your novel Zephyrion published?

I will be sending it to the editor this August. It will be part of the Kwani? Manuscript Prize series. I cannot say when it will come out. Depends on how good it is, and how much editing it needs.

So which one is your favourite, poetry or prose? And how do they compare?

I don’t see much of a difference in both, only that it’s much harder for me to write prose, or more specifically, to sustain it. I cannot get away with obscurity and vagueness with prose, so I have to work harder to have clarity.

It also depends on where I am. Sometimes I just want to write poems. I have phases, but prose is always a challenge. It is difficult to write simply.

Of course this has a lot to do with tastes and aesthetics. If more people get access to a lot of the poetry that is being published now, I think perceptions will change and sensibilities widen.

It has a lot to do with the kind of poetry we are getting exposed to. And in this instant I’m very grateful to APBF for their library project. They sent poetry books to seven African countries for the establishment of libraries across the region.

What do you do in your spare time?

I’m afraid I don’t have any spare time. If I’m not at Kwani?, I’m at home working on the novel or writing poetry or writing TV scripts. I need a long holiday, a long walk on a lonely beach, some wine and poetry.

I walk whenever I can. In Pinball, 1973 [a novel by the Japanese author Haruki Murakami], J tells the Rat: walk slowly and drink a lot of water. That’s what I try to do.

Both books are on Amazon. I have copies of the chapbook with me. Kwani? is also working on getting Madman published and distributed in the region.