Poetry is always my best friend, a ready platform, when l need to testify for myself and society. - Toyin Adewale-Gabriel

Sometimes its blood and tears; at other times, it falls easy like rain. I have note books, filled with the scraps of words. I try to catch the moments… a flock of birds on the wings of twilight, the moon majestic on a tableau of darkness. I am a scribbler. I go back to weave the various scraps into the cloth that becomes a poem.

I was working with the poems as visual imagery, how it impacts the reader on paper and how it can be read in different directions with various layers of meaning, reflecting the many-sidedness, the enigma that an individual is. I think, often times, the poem decides how it wants to take life. Sometimes, you try to develop it in a certain direction and you see that’s not working, so you just let it be.

I do not see how it is possible to live in Nigeria or be Nigerian and write art for art’s sake. I think a poet should be the voice of her society. It has been so from ancient times. Contemporary Nigerian poetry still reflects the pulse of the society, the disappointment with our poor leadership and a voice for the common man. There is a lot more innovation now, the use of multimedia, fusing music and drama, a marriage of the arts. Admirable efforts to actually make a living from writing.