I want to look at the big things that exist in the micro-moments: Ben Okri

It is my first novel in seven years. In between, I have written a book of Stoku (an amalgamation of short story and haiku) titled Tales of Freedom, a collection of essays called Time for New Dreams, and Wild, a book of poems. I have been exploring different genres. I don’t believe in overpublishing, so I have been coming up with books less and less frequently. I am trying to achieve more in less space. It happens to you when you get older. Your standard becomes more difficult and challenging. It puts more pressure on your time. Because of that you need to be more intense and focussed.

Tell us about the book.

I have two great poles among my themes. One is the grittiness of life — the themes of poverty, hardship and what it means to be alive on earth, and the other is the magic of life — the quest for happiness, the truth, the realisation of self and the quest for meaning. One part of my writings is history, the other mythology. One part is reality and the other, dream. One part is the suffering of the earth and the other is the ecstasy of consciousness. I feel it’s necessary to investigate one pole while writing about the other. I don’t want to be a writer who only speaks of this narrow perception of life that we have. Interspersed in the fibre of our lives is an element that’s magical. We fail to see it. Through this book, I want to look at the big things that exist in the small things of life, in the micro-moments.

You have been living in the UK for nearly three decades now. How do you keep in touch with your Nigerian roots?

It has kept itself alive. It’s part of my life. I have a constant engagement with the country, its troubles, challenges and successes. I follow its story very closely. Often, I am asked to comment on it. It’s alive not just in my life, but also in my writing. It is the root of my writing. I can’t get away from it even if I try.

A large part of your writing involves folklore and myths.

I don’t write on them so much anymore. I don’t want to go on doing the same thing. As a writer, when you get comfortable with one shore, you have to push off to another shore. You have to extend the boundary of your language. But they are a part of my thinking. It’s too rich a source for me to give up completely. At the same time, you don’t want to devaluate it by writing about it in the same way.

Have you explored Indian mythology?

India is rich in mythologies — maybe that’s one of the affinities I have with India. I have been reading Indian mythology very slowly over the years. There is a lot to read. The Mahabharata alone has so many volumes. And I am a slow reader. I have done a fundamental reading of the Vedas and stories of Hanuman. I like the easy movement between this world and the fantastical world in them. I like the multiplicity of possibilities.

You experiment a fair bit with the form of your works.

Form is one of the secrets of authenticity. Everyone can tell a story. The most difficult thing is to find the right structure, otherwise that story won’t live. To find form, the writer has to grow. One can’t find a new form with old consciousness. I wrestle with form and architecture in all my books and stories.

How did you come up with Stoku?

The thing about short stories is that we don’t know its length. Is 35,000 words a short story? Is 20,000 words a short story? We don’t know. Within every short story, there is another one, and inside that lies another shorter story. I am constantly looking for what’s the smallest possible unit of a story. At the same time, I see poetry and story as two branches of artistic experience in words. So I thought it would be interesting to find the spirit of haiku in the form of a short story.

When you were 14, your application to study physics was rejected. Did that nudge you towards studying literature?

The impulse for science is right there in the impulse for literature. We are doing the same thing. We are investigating mysteries of life and nature. It’s the same kind of mind. Except that in literature, you do it with imagination and intelligence. Scientists tell me: ‘We do it with intelligence too’. I tell them, with literature, we are doing it through the intangible structures of reality.

On Twitter, you used to post one line of a poem every day. What was the idea behind it?

I wanted to investigate if poetry is possible on Twitter. And I found out that it is possible, up to a point. If you write all your poetry within
Twitter, the danger is that it will die or that you will be afraid of heaviness. From time to time, poetry needs to be obscure, dark and a bit hidden.