Stephen Kekeghe

Stephen Ese Kekeghe (born 10 October 1982) is a Nigerian writer, scholar and academic. His poetry collection Rumbling Sky (2020) is a joint winner of the Association of Nigerian Authors' Prize for Poetry in 2021, and his play Broken Edges (2023) was shortlisted for the Association of Nigerian Authors' Prize for Drama in 2023. Quotes It was a motivation to me because as a writer, what inspires my writing is visibility. I wanted my works to be visible and to be read by a good number of audiences across the world. I was motivated by that prize and it is an attestation that the little imaginative efforts that I’ve been producing over the years are good. As an emerging writer, this kind of recognition makes you established. This prize is an attestation that I am an established writer. I have poems that have been featured in anthologies. In 2012, my work was the only Nigerian entry in Words Without Borders, an international magazine for literature. The magazine was on the theme of oil and they wanted to know how issues of soil and gas are represented in literature the world over. Different Nigerian writers wrote and mine was the best. The title of the poem was ‘When Can We Be Sane?’ I also have other poems on online platforms like Poem Hunters. I started publishing there in 2011. Recently, two of my poems were featured in Sorosoke: An EndSARS Anthology. There is another book on #EndSARS edited by my friends in Canada, two of my poems were also featured in that book. I have been writing, in isolation, and publishing in collections but these are my full-fledge works. I also have one that should be in the press before the end of this year called Charred Remains and Renewals. I tried to portray some revolutionary pressures. I believe that as a writer, there is the need to engage some socialist consciousness. The idea of a sky rumbling is a metaphor for revolution. The resultant effect of a rumbling sky is rainfall. Looking at the book, you will see the aridity of the land and the dryness. I used this metaphor to portray the socio-political landscape and realities of the country and the psychophysical realities of trauma depreciation, economic depreciation and recession. When you look critically, you will see two green plants and that is the image of hope. If the rain pours on this land, it will moisturise the land and more green plants will sprout up. That is the message of hope but that hope will not come easily. The messages are confrontational messages that expose the ills of the society from the domestic to socio-political space. In a way, that controversy gives this book (done by Nigerians) a market. In the neoclassical stage, attack and rejoinder help to market creative products. We also have it in the music industry. I tried to follow the conversation and I must say that there is this Eurocentric belief we have and we cannot transcend it. Anything that is produced by people from the Global North has a big market. That is why, as a scholar, I want my works to be read in the Global North just like the Global South. I don’t know which of the two works came first because this had an online version before it was printed but that other one seems to be well promoted and it is a good market for this book. We can even study those two words and look at the angles of the different writers. No, SoroSoke was a social invention during the #EndSARS protests. It was invented by the protesters in the streets. It is a Yoruba term which means ‘speak up’. That concept couldn’t have been invented by a white person. It is strictly indigenous. I believe she got it from that movement just like our writers here but I do not know who got it first.