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Dzifa
Benson interview
This interview with Dzifa Benson was first
published in May 2006.
Where were you born and raised?
I was born in North London and lived here until I
was 6 years old. Then my parents got divorced and I went to live with my
grandma in Lagos, Nigeria. My background however, is Ghanaian and when I was
about 10 years old, my mother decided that I really needed to learn more about
my own culture and packed me off to Ghana to live with my aunt while she worked
on the family business in Lagos. I came back to the UK when I was 17.
What was it that first got you into writing and when did
you start writing?
I cannot point to a clear cut realisation that I wanted to
write but I do remember trying to write my autobiography when I was 6 years old
(illustrated with my own drawings to boot!). What I can clearly remember is how
I always had my nose in a book from a very young age. Reading stories has
always been important to me for as long as I can remember. My grandmother, who
was an English teacher, had a shelf of books, including all the unabridged
works of Shakespeare. I had devoured all of these, Chinua Achebe’s
"Things Fall Apart" and Haggard’s "King
Solomon’s Mines" amongst many others by the time I was 8 years old. My
grandmother herself was also a great influence in this regard. I liked nothing
better than to sit at her feet in the light of a hurricane lamp, especially
during the frequent powercuts in Lagos and hear her tell stories of our
ancestors. But I guess the idea of being a writer really began to crystallise
for me when I was 11 years old and wrote a poem that got displayed on the
school notice board. In the same year I wrote and staged a comic play that won
a prize and got performed at the parents and teachers’ day.
Which writers have influenced you the most?
This is a difficult question to answer. I would say that I
am more influenced by individual books and stories rather than the writers
themselves. If pressed though, I would have to name Gabriel
Garcia Marquez’s "Love In The Time of Cholera", Mikhail Bulgakov’s
"The Master and Margarita", Dostoevsky’s "The Idiot",
inevitably, Shakespeare, myths, folktales and legends from all around the
world, a whole raft of African writers including Ama Ata Aidoo and Ngugi Wa Thiongo.
Right now, short stories are the thing – Guy de Maupassant is an eternal
favourite but I favour more contemporary writers – Andrea Lee’s writing in
"Interesting Women" makes the hair on the back of my neck stand to
attention. But influences don’t just come from books though. Streetlife –
yesterday I saw a dog’s leash caught in a car door and that set my mind off on
a course of ‘what if….’ Photography – Henri Cartier Bresson, Robert Doisneau,
The World Press Photo Awards. Music – Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Miles Davis,
Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody On The Theme Of Paganini is one of the best stories I
ever heard told, all in musical notes. I won’t dig into the realm of cinema or
art or else I’ll be answering this question all night!
Where do you stand on the nature v. nurture debate? Were
you born a writer, or were there factors in your environment that enabled you
to become a writer?
I definitely feel the need to read and tell stories is
part of my essential make up. I would even go as far as saying that it is a
compulsion. I feel that my family, on seeing this natural inclination,
encouraged me for all it was worth. I have always gravitated towards anything
that whiffed of ‘artistic expression’. I was in the school band for example, I
have acted in plays, dancing, singing, drawing, plaiting hair in beautifully
designed cornrows that you see in Africa, designing and making my own clothes.
I have also nurtured that innate bias in me by surrounding myself with writers,
poets, musicians, chefs (the best ones are as creative as any artist. They
understand that food is all about chemistry, physics, aesthetics not to mention
taste!). But more than anything, language excites me. I could have been an
English teacher just like my gran. Or maybe a professor of semantics. Or maybe
even an anthropologist specializing in how language in general has arrived at
where it is today. Who knows?
I believe that you write a poem every day? How long
does it take you to write each one? And what do you do with all these
poems?
I wish I could write a poem everyday! Sometimes a poem
will arrive fully formed in my mind and all it takes is a matter of
transferring what is in mind on to paper there and then. It's a bit like
when you hear of those women who feel a need to go to the loo and out pops a
baby. And they didn’t even know they were pregnant. It is almost like the gods
granting you a gift when that happens. But for the most part, because my poems
are very much ideas led, they have a longer gestation period. A bit like a
planned pregnancy! Some poems have to be teased out painstakingly before they
reveal their character, their shape and even what they are about. What do I do
with them? Perform them, send them off to magazines, recite them to friends.
The more I can get them out there the better, as far as I am concerned. I am
also working towards producing a chapbook at some point.
How does it feel for you to read one of your poems to an
audience?
There is nothing more fantastic than seeing people recognise,
relate to and respond to the words that you have written. It humbles me and
simultaneously makes me feel as tall as a giant. It is very addictive, being on
stage. And every poem is different every time, depending on the audience and
depending on your mood that day.
You’re currently embarked on writing your first novel. How
is this coming along? Will it be similar in tone to “Tempting Fate”, your “Tell
Tales” contribution?
Writing a novel is a huge commitment and now that I have
embarked on my mine I appreciate the dogged nature that is a job requirement
for a novelist and it makes me admire writers all the more. The writing is
going well and I hope to have a first draft completed by the end of the year.
"Tempting Fate" rambled around the foothills of Magic Realism but the
novel is set firmly in the ‘real’ Although Legba, the deity in Tempting Fate,
will make something of a cameo appearance. You will just have to read it when
it comes out to see what I mean!
You’re also making a documentary about the evolution of
African music. How did this come about?
I used to be a freelance journalist writing for "The
Guardian" and music in general has informed my career to date quite a bit.
Although I don’t do as much music journalism as I used to, I am still
interested in how an appreciation of music is so deeply ingrained into human
consciousness. Being African, I was brought up to treat music as such a part of
everyday life that when I came back to the UK, it took me some time to get used
to how much music was compartmentalised over here. Most African languages do
not have a generic word for ‘music’ but just for the different forms it takes.
I wanted to show this and how the music of Africa had traveled outwards, come
back to meet itself and take on new hybrid forms. In short, it came in a moment
of epiphany.
What’s the best piece of feedback you’ve had about your
writing?
Maybe not the best, but the most startling piece of
feedback I had was when someone compared my poems to the writing of Charles
Bukowski! They had to take pains to explain to me that it was the free-form
feel they had not the subject matter or mode of expression.
Do you have a homepage? If so, what’s the URL?
No website at the moment but coming before the year is
out. You can however find some my journalism and read my poem "Bottom
Power" here: http://www.itzcaribbean.com/dzifa_benson.php
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