MEMORY AND THE CREATIVE WRITING PROCESS

As a writer, I keep going back and forth into my memory. My resolution early this year was to write less grief-based poems. Perhaps, this is because such poems are in vogue today.

I am aware that the world is in despair and a sad state. Wars, health conditions, environmental degradation, poor mental health, poverty, hunger and many other social issues. I am aware that writing for some people comes as a kind of calling. They feel duty-bound to mirror everything around them. This is a good posture seeing writing can be used for activism and also bring about some kind of social correctness to society. I again feel that as writers, if we focus solely on these issues, we may lose the joy of living and so, my interest is to create more happy poems. But as I have observed with writing, sometimes, poems dictate themselves to the poet and only use the pen of the poet as an outlet; like water gushing out of a tap on its own accord.
The human memory is very powerful. It can recreate thoughts in the most effervescent and rapturous manner. It makes everything possible. And once in a while, our creativity spurns around them to give voice to the inner rumbling we aren’t paying attention to in us.
When I wrote last night that "heartbreak is a faithful memory."
It is because each time I reach out to this part of my memory, my creativity comes alive. It is like a wound that I keep undressing and re-dressing with poems. It is sad but necessary. Let me share an instance to that effect: Early today at work, I went to the lavatory [restroom] to free the bustling in my urethra.
When I got to the door and I opened it, an old memory came to my mind like the flashback of a movie on a television screen of some few months back.

I often call my girlfriend from that place when I’m at work, especially on morning calls. It is the place where I dissipate all my "miss yous."
So when this memory came alive, I wanted to poem it. Let me show you a rough draft of what I thought at that instant:
“Today, I banged open the door of the lavatory;

My heart whispered: "call her, her voice is the magic that makes your day surreal."
then I sat on the water closet and the songs she sang to me the previous night comes breaking into my ears. my eyes are misty.
& while I argued if my heart was right. I followed my head.
I could go on and on tying the poem to many other imageries & metaphors. I’m not writing this because I am hurting. Of course, writing has been my coping mechanism with life. I have been depressed in the past & this emotion became poems. You can read one of such poems "To Save a Bird" in "Kalahari Magazine."
Memories, both good & pleasant are what I collect into poems.

Bio

Ojo Olumide Emmanuel [Writer & Humanbeing] is a Nigerian Poet and Book Editor. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of The Nigerian Review (TNR). He writers from the city of Minna.