Abu Bakr Sadiq is the author of Leaked Footages (University of Nebraska Press, 2024), which won the 2023 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poetry. “Leaked Footages” is a profound meditation on loss, memory, and the search for meaning in a world grappling with uncertainty. Through his powerful verse, Sadiq explores themes of trauma, displacement, violence, and other aspects of the human experience. In this interview, Sadiq, among other things, shares how he uses poetry to confront these challenging issues, his reflections on the role of time and memory in his work, and insights into his unique writing style, which seamlessly blends traditional forms with speculative sensibilities.
What inspired you to write your collection, Leaked Footages?
Leaked Footages was born out of the need to document the experiences and lives of the people I call my own and those whose existing realities mirrored life in the way I had grown to know it. In hindsight, that need had been inside me for long and the whole time, I never felt for once that I was prepared to write the book. Prior to the commencement of drafting the poems, I lived with a great sense of inadequacy whenever I thought about what it would take to pull the poems from my head and put them on the page without coming up short. This, I think, was because I already had a faint picture of what I thought the collection was demanding to be seen as, even before I drafted the first poem.
It took more than just inspiration to even decide to put the manuscript together because I think the book came out rather out of necessity. It was as if the poems were a pile of pills stuck in my throat. The only way out was for me to either swallow them all or throw them up- I chose the latter and that was what came out. I didn’t know for certain that Leaked Footages would be “my collection.” All I did was surrender to the voice inside and make myself a vessel for it to say whatever it wanted to say. I needed to write those poems to bring to rest a storm-like feeling inside me. It was my way of understanding and contending with the experiences I was navigating at that time.
Leaked Footages reflect a profound sense of loss—loss of loved ones, homes, and histories. How do you see poetry helping you (or others) reclaim or reconstruct these losses, if at all?
One of the things I hope to achieve with my writing is to explore how poetry can serve as a bridge between the past, present, and future. Essentially, this sets me on a journey of documenting my own life’s navigation while simultaenously imagining what our realities might look like in the future. There are several creative mediums that I could achieve this with but I’m more than grateful to begin this journey using poetry. I’m fascinated by the power of poetic language to hold time to a standstill in what is, sometimes, only a few lines. It feels magical to me. That magic was what I sought to explore with the poems in Leaked Footages.
Poetry allows us to capture different aspects of our experiences- love, loss, identity, grief, childhood, and more—on the page. By writing what you’ve lost, you are, in a sense, immortalising it. Whether it be a person, a feeling, a house, a country, or parts of yourself that you can’t even name, you are giving it a new form of life. It becomes something that will probably live forever—not just in your mind but also in the minds of every reader who comes across it. Writing about it gives a new life to your memory. You sow the contents of this new memory in the minds of readers, wherever they may be. Your poem becomes a mnemonic—a point of contact for readers who resonate with your story. It reduces the chances of what you’ve lost being forgotten. That is why the documentation of these narratives is important to me.
In a broader sense, our experiences as humans are very similar. Sympatheia, a concept in stoicism, refers to the idea that all things in the universe are interconnected. That we, as humans, are not isolated entities but part of a larger cosmic web where every action, thought, and decision ripples outward, affecting others positively or negatively. Bearing this in mind, I think that each time we write poems about those things we’ve lost or any of our experience at all, the poems become mirrors for not just ourselves but for people to whom these experiences are not alien, to see themselves in a light they may not have had the courage to do if they were to write about these experiences themselves.
If, as people, our lives are not fundamentally different from each other, perhaps we feel distinct because of differences in geography, culture, tradition, language, or colour. However, the things we go through as human beings are more or less the same. Everyone experiences loss at least once in their lifetimes. It could be a loss of self, language, loved ones, hair, country, home, limb, history, or faith. The act of contemplating these losses or experiences through poetry positions it as an archive for preserving our interconnected human experiences.
In Post-Massacre Psych Evaluation, you speak to the effects of trauma in a brutally honest way. What role do you think poetry can play in addressing or processing collective trauma, especially in regions affected by conflict?
I wrote this poem largely in response to the shooting of protesters at Lekki Toll Gate during the EndSarz protest in 2020. As is usually the case with most of the poems I write, it was my way of processing that horrific event. Using poetry as a medium for documentation and archiving also serves to create awareness about our realities and current circumstances.
I think that by writing about how larger societal issues affect us personally or about how you see the world, you, as a poet, addres collective experiences—traumatic or not—because we humans are a complex entity and our experiences are similar.
With technology, the world is becoming smaller and smaller. It’s easy to connect and build relationships with people who are thousands of miles away from you without necessarily ever being together physically. In that connection, it is possible to exchange cultures, traditions, languages, art, poetry, etcetera. If we recognize that the world is continually evolving and bringing us to a point where these exchanges can happen, then poetry could help us to not only contend with our realities but also seek solutions outside of where we call home.
In recent years, Dominique Christina’s “Anarcha Speaks,” Ilya Kaminsky’s “Deaf Republic,” and Fady Joudah’s “[…]: Poems,” among many other works of poetry, are some excellent examples of poetry being used to address both generational and collective trauma. These poetry collections have had a great impact in fostering conversations about the various societal issues they addressed.
For some of us, the only way to process issues like this is by writing about them. For some readers, the literature about these issues is where they find solace. The knowledge that someone sees what you are going through, that your suffering is worth writing about and worthy of being immortalized on a page, sometimes, is enough for some of us. Ultimately, engaging in writing poems that address these societal issues is with the hopes of seeing how we can make our world a better place because poetry is a craft that has the power to help us become better at relating with one another as human beings.
Your use of time in the collection, particularly in Wormhole, is both linear and cyclical, almost like it’s collapsing in on itself. Could you speak to your relationship with time and memory in your poetry?
I think the way time or the idea of it is portrayed in the collection is an aftereffect of all the years of experiencing people, places, and stories that are way older than me in various mediums, forms, and circumstances. I grew up in a family where storytelling was an essential part of our daily lives. We used to have nights where adults and kids exchanged stories of events that occurred across different times.
Adults usually shared stories about times and events that had happened before they were born. According to them, these same stories were passed down to them by older members of the family who came before them. Essentially, the occurrences in specific periods of time in our history were being transmitted from one generation to another. My sisters are some of the best storytellers I know. They have a unique ability of telling stories in a way that literally unfolds the event embedded in their stories right before my eyes.
Coming from a tribe where traditional practices allowed individuals to have their lives spiritually tied to the lives of animals, if I close my eyes long enough, I can imagine my grandfather in the body of a crocodile. It makes me think about what he would be like as a crocodile. These stories and the images they come with are etched deep in my memory and hence, they easily come back to life when I write.
Growing up, I’d always been fascinated by science. Some of the most interesting aspects of science that I love are related to space and time. I have loved the idea of parallel universes, time travel, general relativity, cosmic bodies, etcetera. Time, particularly, is a phenomenon that I love to experiment with in my poetry. I love to think that a lot of history, which is tied to time, could be learnt through poetry. In my poetry, I try to see the many ways in which I could use different markers of time in the past, present, and future to amplify our experiences as a people. Time serves as a portal for me to explore the innumerable possibilities of existing as a different person; to explore our collective otherness, even if only imaginative.
I noticed philosophical and existential elements of fate and faith in your work, particularly in Maqtoob. How do these ideas inform your writing?
It is hard to separate my Islamic beliefs or my life as a Muslim from my writing. I was born into a Muslim family and growing up, one of the earliest lessons I learnt was that the fate of every creature in the universe is already written, which is essentially what the poem Maqtoob explores.
My outlook on life is heavily influenced by my father. He was an instructor and of course, he had a myriad of ideological beliefs about what it meant to be a person in the world. In a sense, we were like best friends who discussed everything and in between those discussions, I was fed mouthfuls of philosophies. Being close friends with my dad meant I was also close friends with his friends, who also had their own distinct philosophical beliefs about the world and our existence in it.
They were very generous in sharing these ideologies with me. I saw them as fathers in the same way they thought of me as a son. These exchanges shaped my mind and made me see life the way I do today. It’s only natural that bits of the philosophies and ideologies that have shaped who I am today as a person sneak into my poetry.
How important are sound and rhythm in your writing process? Do you ever read your poems aloud while working on them?
All the time. When I began writing poetry, the only way my poems reached an audience was through performance. The process of crafting my poems for stage performances, as you would expect, meant I had to recite them multiple times to myself. That habit has proven indispensable now that most of my poetry is housed in pages. It is impossible for me to write a poem without reading it aloud. That is how I get to know if any part of the poem isn’t working; it is how I observe the progression and flow to know if they are working in tandem to ensure harmony in the poem.
Reading it out loud feels like I’m touching a soul-like part of the poem that I might not otherwise be able to access. Beyond form and structural aesthetics, I desire for my poetry to have a sonic appeal. I always want to get a sense that I have made the right word choices. If the poem doesn’t sound half as good as it appears on the page, then there’s more work to be done. I’m always mindful of rhythm and the psychological effects of sound when I write. What you hear, you feel, just like music.
What does your typical writing process look like? Do you have any specific rituals or practices that help you access your creativity?
I don’t have a typical writing practice. My writing process is very fluid and dynamic. However, I have noticed some sort of pattern over the years. I usually begin enjoying the creative works of others. It could be hours or days spent watching documentaries, battle rap, reading literary works, and other art mediums. Exposing myself to these works gets my creative juices flowing.
While I do enjoy writing in the quiet of my room, I do a lot of writing outdoors, too. This includes basketball courts, barbershops, cafes, or just anywhere I can feel connected to the work I’m creating and the environment at the same time. I love writing with background noise as it helps me to stay focused. I enjoy writing with music as well.
When you’re working on a poem, how do you know when it’s finished?
I never do. The crafting of a poem is a never-ending process for me. I don’t think I ever get to know, with certainty, when my poem is finished. Oftentimes, not even journal and magazine publications bring an end to this crafting process. There is always a phrase or two to move around, a better point to place a line break, a better image to express an idea, or language to tighten.
I love to think that poems, or poetry in general, should be an experience. The more I feel I have managed to create an experience with a poem, the closer I feel to not wanting to touch it any further. This experience could take a day or years to create. Also, the feedback I get from my friends helps me know if a poem is anywhere close to feeling like an experience.
Your poetry seems to merge elements of both traditional and futuristic or speculative writing, almost as if it’s grounded in reality while imagining new worlds. For example, your references to drones and cyborgs. What inspired this?
I think this element of my poetry is mostly informed by my upbringing as a child. I grew up with an immense fascination for science and the mechanics of various entities of the universe. So much that when I began writing, all of the things I had consumed and lived as a lover of science streamed almost effortlessly into my writing. It is imperative to note that this juxtaposition or incorporation of scientific ideas into my writing didn’t happen immediately after I began writing. There was so much I didn’t know about the craft of writing. I didn’t even know of the many ways writing poetry could be experimental until after a close reading of the works of Layli Long Soldier, Kaveh Akbar, Franny Choi, and Jenny Xie.
Observing what they were doing with structure, technique, and execution was an eye opener. I also spent a lot of time studying the poetry publications by Strange Horizons, Uncanny Magazine, and Fantasy Magazine, amongst many others, where I fell in love with the speculative approach of writing poems. That endeavour exposed me to the endless possibilities abound in experimentation with poetry and language. Before my encounter with experimental poetry, I had consumed a great amount of poetry written in traditional forms. Perhaps this is why I’m able to bring all of these elements into my own poetry today.
What poets shaped your writing?
There are so many poems who have kept the door open for my writing to become what it is today. Michael Rage Imona, Chuka Lotanna, and Fayomi Olumide were the people who formally introduced me to poetry. Michael and I used to challenge ourselves to write a poem every day. He built my commitment to the craft of writing and helped me develop a passion for it.
In 2019, Kaveh Akbar was so kind to send me his collection “Calling a Wolf a Wolf,” and I read it like my life depended on it. Reading his collection was a pivotal moment that orchestrated the trajectory my poetry would take in the months that followed.
Back in 2020, Alycia Pirmohammed offered me feedback on a poem in a way that opened my mind to the mechanics and movement of language on the page in a way that I hadn’t seen before. She seemed to have understood the needs of my poem and poetry better than I did. Her feedback on my poem had in it lessons that I still go back to to this day.
In 2020, I participated in a masterclass facilitated by Aremu Adebisi, which he called Transcendence. Members of the Unserious Collective (Pamilerin Jacob, Nome Emeka Patrick, etc.) were some of the tutors. They were so generous to share insightful ideas about writing and approach, which I carry with me into every poem I write. Aremu Adebisi, through his poetry and Transcendence Masterclass, was instrumental to my engagement with poetics of faith and identity. He also introduced me to a larger community of poets, most of whom are now close friends of mine.
Mayowa Oyewale and Martins Deep, unknowingly, through hours of phone conversations, voice notes, and emails, taught me about my own poetry that I couldn’t have learnt anywhere else. My family at The Deadliners have taught me so much about writing poetry, navigating the publishing industry, and existing as a poet.
My poetry has greatly been influenced by the works of several other poets, including Ilya Kaminsky, Franny Choi, Safia Elhillo, Nome Emeka Patrick, Carolyn Forché, Ladan Osman, Koleka Patuma, and Claire Schwartz.
What effect do you hope Leaked Footages has on its readers?
I don’t know about what kind of effects to hope for, but if readers, on reaching the end of the collection, get anything close to the feeling of having seen a movie, a theatrical performance, or a documentary, then that will be nice.
