Samuel A. Adeyemi fits the bill of a stereotypical writer. He took up writing because he was a shy and introverted kid who needed to eloquently express himself. He drinks coffee and he reads. Although he denies playing into stereotypes, anyone who has held his words and let them sink into their hearts knows he is a writer and, more specifically, a masterful poet.
Adeyemi is part of an emerging group of poets proficiently weaving tales around grief, identity, religion, and love. He fell in love with the form in secondary school thanks to Literature classes where he met William Shakespeare, Alfred Tennyson, Gabriel Okara, and other scribes who did unimaginative things with the genre.
With Poetry, the writer found the freedom that fiction failed to provide him. In it, he is more in tune with his soul. For the inaugural column of Literary Lens, we speak to Samuel A. Adeyemi. We discuss his excavation of raw emotions, the poetry landscape in Nigeria, and his journey thus far.
You’ve become one of the defining young voices in Nigerian poetry. But I want to go back to the beginning. What first drew you to poetry? Was there a poem, a book, a line, or even a moment that made you say, This is it; this is the language I want to speak?
Samuel Adeyemi: I don’t remember if it was a specific moment. Most people were introduced to poetry in secondary school, and I was an art student. I took literature classes.
There was this textbook; I think it was called Exam Focus. There were poems there, and my literature teacher used to teach us from that book, and I just kind of fell in love with poetry from there.
There were a lot of good poems, African and otherwise. There was Crossing the Bar. There was Piano and Drums. I think there was one called The Dining Table. That was what got me started.
But before then, I used to love music. I used to love rap. I used to love rhythm. So obviously, there’s a relationship between rap music and poetry. But that formal introduction was through secondary school. That’s when I discovered that I liked it and I was good at it, in a way.
You’ve chosen poetry as your primary medium, while many emerging Nigerian writers gravitate towards fiction. Why poetry? What does the form allow you to do that other genres can’t?
Samuel Adeyemi: Poetry gives you a kind of freedom in the sense that you have a kind of privilege. You have some leeway to do a lot of things with language. But aside from that, what took me to poetry, what made me choose poetry, was the fact that growing up, I was a very, very quiet person. Maybe not so quiet, but during my teenage years, I became very quiet, secluded, and introverted. Still introverted.
I wasn’t much of a talker. But I needed to express myself. If I couldn’t speak so much, it doesn’t mean I didn’t have emotions, right? I still felt stuff. So I needed a platform to let what I was feeling out. Poetry was that space. It accommodated my love for language.
I tried writing fiction. I wrote some stories, quite horribly, though. I tried to write a novel once, and I failed. Even now, I don’t really read novels like that. I read a lot of poetry and nonfiction. Mostly philosophy.
I think poetry gives more room for experimentation, for being yourself. With prose, there’s more structure. With poetry, especially with free verse, you can break form, break lines, and break punctuation and still say something beautiful. It’s more honest for me.
Your poems often grapple with faith, grief, and the ghosts of belief systems. In Heaven is a Metaphor, and even in Rose Ash, you seem to be working through both a spiritual inheritance and a slow departure from it. Can you talk about your relationship to religion and how it continues to shape or haunt your writing?
Samuel Adeyemi: I grew up in a religious household, like most Nigerians. My parents were very, very strong believers. I still don’t think I’ve met anyone as religious as my mom, and I mean that in a good way.
I inherited that, obviously. I went to church a lot; I was very active. I used to share tracts, evangelise, preach, and pray. I joined prayer groups. I even joined the choir. Even after I started questioning everything, I was still in the choir.
The thing that changed it for me was my mum’s health. I started seeing the futility of life and the irony of someone who was so good and so religious going through so much pain and sickness. It just didn’t make sense to me.
So that’s when I started to question things. I began to depart from religion not suddenly, but slowly. But it’s still in me. The music, the verses, and the language are still with me. That’s why it’s still in my writing.
I tell myself sometimes that I’m done writing religious poems or “angry” poems about religion, but it always shows up. It shaped me. It’s still shaping me.
Grief appears not just as a theme in your work but as a texture, something that hangs in the air between words. How do you approach writing about grief, and what are the rituals, if any, that help you translate it to the page?
Samuel Adeyemi: For me, grief is not a theme. It’s just there. I don’t write about grief, per se. It’s just all around me, so it shows up in the writing.
The way I write poems most time, every poem begins with a line. Not necessarily the first line, just a line. That line can come from anywhere: maybe while walking, while listening to a song. I just get a line in my head and I write it down.
Sometimes, I write a list of random lines in my Notes app. Like, I have really bad memory, so I jot stuff down. And then later, I revisit them and try to build a poem from there.
Other times, I freewrite. No punctuation, no stopping. I just let it out. It’s more about emotion than coherence. And sometimes, I mishear lyrics, like I think I hear something, but it’s not what they sang, and that misheard lyric becomes a line in a poem.
So I wouldn’t say there’s a ritual. I just let myself feel whatever I’m feeling and let the words come.
On social media, you’ve spoken frankly about struggling to write not because the ideas are gone, but because of the demands of capitalism. What do you think capitalism steals from artists? And how much do you feel it has already taken from you?
Samuel Adeyemi: A whole lot. Like right now, I work three jobs. I work at a radio station, I freelance, and I read submissions for a literary journal. And it’s not because I want to; it’s because I have to.
I studied English and Literary Studies, and the normal trajectory is to go and teach, but I didn’t want to do that. So I found my way into a radio station and begged them for a chance. From there, it just became gig after gig.
During NYSC, Rose Ash came out. I literally took copies with me to camp in Zamfara. But I couldn’t promote it well. I didn’t have the time or resources. I was learning how to do KDP, trying to do graphic design, trying to freelance, and trying to survive.
Then my mom died. That was the end of something. I stopped writing for a long time. I still wrote lines here and there, but nothing consistent.
Capitalism steals time. It steals rest. It steals silence. And poetry needs silence. It needs attention and slowness. Capitalism gives you none of that. I see a lot of artists quitting. Going into tech, or UI/UX, or crafts, or anything else. Because you need to survive before you can create, I’m still trying to find that balance.
Within Nigeria’s literary landscape, fiction writers tend to get the spotlight – the prizes, the profiles, and the publishing deals. As a poet, do you ever feel sidelined? And what keeps you returning to the form, even when it feels like a quiet room in a noisy house?
Samuel Adeyemi: Yeah, I feel it sometimes. I’m almost jealous. I’m not even going to lie. But I think most of the best poets we have in Nigeria didn’t start writing because they wanted awards or fellowships. They started from a genuine love for language. That’s what keeps me coming back. When I started writing poems, I didn’t even know what publishing was. I just liked the way certain words sounded together. I liked how a poem could make me feel. So yes, fiction gets more spotlight. But the form itself—poetry—is the reward.
You’re part of a wave of Nigerian poets who are documenting the intimate – faith, family, grief, and memory in ways that feel almost archival. Do you feel a responsibility to write for a particular audience or archive? Or are you writing primarily for yourself?
Samuel Adeyemi: Tricky question.
I think I write for myself first. That’s how it started. I was just trying to get things out. But eventually, when people start reading your work, you start to think about how it lands.
So sometimes I write for others, not specific people, but for the collective “other.” Like empathy. Like during End SARS, I wrote poems even though I wasn’t there in person. It mattered to me. I was feeling it, too.
But at the core, I’m writing for myself. Because that’s the most honest way I know how to write.
Like Pamela Ritchiecoke always says, “You contain multitudes.” So even if I’m writing for myself, there are parts of me that are writing for my community, for history, for the ones who haven’t found the words yet.
Finally, what is the poem you wish you had written, and why?
Samuel Adeyemi: A Brief for the Defence by Jack Gilbert.
That poem gave me something. It’s the kind of poem that lets you hold joy and sorrow at the same time. It doesn’t pretend everything is okay, but it reminds you that beauty still exists, even in ruin.
The line that always stays with me is, “We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.” I go back to that often.
I wish I had written that poem because it says something I’ve been trying to say for a long time.
