The Tolu Oloruntoba Interview

After abandoning plans to become a comic book artist and fantasy author, Tolu Oloruntoba spent his early career as a primary care physician. He currently manages virtual health projects and has lived in Nigeria, the United States, and Canada. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, while his debut chapbook, Manubrium, was a bpNichol Chapbook Award finalist. The Junta of Happenstance (Palimpsest Press, 2021)is his debut collection of poetry, which recently won the 2022 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s award.

Tolu’s second poetry collection, Each One A Furnace (M&S, 2022) is already available, so check that out too. He lives in the metro area of Coast Salish lands known as Vancouver. For those keeping score at home, the judges for this year’s prize were Adam Dickinson (Canada), Valzhyna Mort (Belarus/U.S.), and Claudia Rankine (Jamaica/U.S.).

Did you know the Griffin Poetry prize received 639 entries, including 57 translations from 24 languages, that were submitted by well over 200 publishers from 16 different countries? The Junta of Happenstance, Tolu Oloruntoba’s dazzling debut collection, collides the language of revolution with the landscapes of the body,” the judges said about Tolu’s debut, in their citation. “These poems go beyond the desire to ward off death. They emerge out of a life intimate with death’s randomness. Like the vicissitudes of war, Oloruntoba’s poems make peace with accident and fate. They bring breath to survival. ‘If the timeline ahead is/ infinitely longer than the/ knives behind, perhaps/ as we set to mending/ we can heal more/ than we ever undid./ But we, too,/ would like a piece of the plunder.’ These exquisite poems leave an imprint both violent and terrifyingly beautiful.” Tolu and I chatted over email about his big win, and what’s next and maybe we talked a bit about wrestling and poetry as well. But you’ll never know. Or will you?

How far into writing what would become the first few poems of The Junta of Happenstance did you think, yeah this could be a book?

Thanks for this interview, Nathaniel. I had always wanted it to be a book. But it started as a different book, which I started compiling in 2003. An older friend of mine at the time had gotten his poems published, and it occurred to me for the first time that I could perhaps try to do that too. But with each new era of my life, the previous poems became less true or hadn’t kept up with my development as a writer. So by the time I sent what became my debut to publishers, none of the initial poems were still in it. All the poems in The Junta of Happenstance matched that era of my life (2017-2019). The outtakes are hidden away, or folded into later manuscripts. They just weren’t right for the book I was writing.

Your second collection is out as the Griffin Prize goes to you for your first book. How do you balance these universes? After all, there is no multiverse. Or is there? I mean, you use the word in your book.

Haha, I don’t balance the universes. They continue to bleed into each other. Between both books, I have had over a year of almost constant promo. But back to universes. There’s a universe of possibility in which I gave up writing poetry in 2017, and put all my poems away. That self would have been on the cusp of success but would have been too disillusioned to persevere. There’s another universe in which I didn’t find Jim Johnstone, or he didn’t find me, and the book that became in this universe wouldn’t have become. I am glad to live in this reality where improbabilities have collided to create my recent history.

What advice would you give a poet who can’t find the right tone?

I’d say it’s best to wait for it, that right tone. Poets (and ultimately, readers) can usually sense when the tone or spirit of a poem is off, even when it is technically accomplished. I try not to force the poem in any particular direction. I do keep my notes and fragments, though. When the tones in the front room and back room of my brain match and the house of mind begins to vibrate, I can usually find interesting ways for new and existing words to fit together.

Is poetry a truth?

Good poems need to be or are inadvertently true, even if they do not deploy facts, even if they are totally fantastical, ignore reality, or warp it. We cannot take poets at their word, but we must.

What was your knowledge of prize culture in Canadian publishing prior to the publication of your first collection?

As a reader, prizes brought books to my attention that I might not have found otherwise. Before I was published, I genuinely wanted the validation that prizes promised. My view began to change when I began to engage with the work of critics like Shane Neilson, who continue to do the valuable work of forcing us to confront the deficiencies of prize culture in its current and usual iterations. I am made uncomfortable by the knowledge that prizes are ultimately subjective, that there are numerous books and authors that do not get the attention that they deserve, and that the true measure of the value of a book is in its value to the author and individual reader. Having applied for countless prizes and competitions in my time living in three countries, I find that this sentiment about prize culture is almost universal. We have a problematic tendency to create hierarchies of books. And it has frequently happened that books that won some prize or the other have not worked for me personally. I am sure my book is the same for numerous readers. This is because, in terms of style, content, and the reader’s needs and tastes, we need and enjoy different books at different times. Prize culture tends to flatten those nuances and present an anointed few, which may not be representative of the bounty the field offers. The frenetic pace of it can also reduce a book’s “useful” lifespan to about one year, after which another cohort elides the last. There must be a better way, but I am not exactly sure what that would be. Having won prizes myself, all this may seem ungrateful, but this is not the case. I am just extremely conscious of the need for better.

What does winning the Griffin Prize mean to you and what do you hope to build on from this?

I think of it in terms of the book I won it for. Being a chronicle of personal struggle, I feel fortunate that more readers will now find this work, and bear witness to its witness. There’s no telling what they will do with it, and that possibility is almost intoxicating. I also think of the 600+ books submitted for this prize. I have read dozens of the poetry collections published in the last year, and wish I could read them all. I hope other readers also discover the intensity and rich diversity of the work the poets are doing. I don’t consider myself to have “arrived” at all; I was simply doing work that was essential for me. I intend to continue to do this with my poetry. I however hope for my poetry to transcend the book form and have relevance in the “real” world, because I believe poetry belongs with us all–in our daily lives and spaces. I also intend to immerse myself in other forms of writing, with the hope that something about discovery (and failure on the way to proficiency) helps me continue to create with integrity.

Do you think that our use of language to describe ourselves is limited?

Verbal language is ultimately limited. There are subconscious currents that will remain untranslatable. But art continues to strive to incarnate the unsayable, with varying degrees of
success. It is magical work.

If you could read any poem you’ve written to any person living or dead what poem would it be and who would you read it to?

I would read “A History of Treachery” to any of the 17th-century monarchs in what became Nigeria. They signed treaties that were ultimately and brutally dishonoured by the British. One may argue that colonizers would have found a way to extract the resources they wanted with their naval and military power, but my peoples might just have found a way to remain sovereign nations.

Listen to Tolu on CBC’s Q with Tom Power.

Nathaniel G. Moore

Nathaniel G. Moore is a writer, artist and publishing consultant grateful to be living on the unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) and Mi'kmaq peoples.