Inua Ellams

Inua Marc Mohammed Onore de Ellams II MBE FRSL (born 23 October 1984) is a Nigerian-born British poet, playwright and performer. He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to the arts. Quotes "Everything boils down to poetry for me." Inua Ellams, Londonist, 2009. He was explaining how poetry connects his different forms of creative work "I had wanted to be a visual artist. I wanted to paint and create with my fingers, but I couldn’t afford acrylic paint, and I didn’t yet really know how to use Photoshop, but I still wanted to express myself, so I drifted into poetry because I saw it as the same thing, as painting pictures, but just with words instead of brushes." Inua Ellams, Londonist, 2009. "Fundamentally, anything that an artist creates is autobiographical because you are expressing something of yourself." Inua Ellams, Londonist, 2009. "Rather, what inspires me? Truth and the search for greater understanding. I don’t believe that we are fundamentally different from each other." Inua Ellams, when asked what inspires him. 26, 2012. "I learnt from an early age that folks are folks. Regardless of race, culture, age, identity we are all as inventive, deceitful, gorgeous, violent, supreme, kind, devious, incredibly welcoming, kind and two faced as each other." Inua Ellams, when asked what inspires him. 26, 2012. "Creativity is flexibility. It means having no fixed way of beginning conversations or approaching problems." Inua Ellams, British Council, discussing what creativity means to him. "Social media is negatively affecting our attention span, which means that we do not think deeply enough to solve problems." Inua Ellams, British Council. "We don’t teach that. I think we teach science, and we teach circuitry and you have to tick the box, but we don’t say, ‘The world is out there, go build.’" Inua Ellams, British Council. "Fear is one of the greatest inhibitors to creativity, because you think, I cannot think that, because this and this and this might happen; rather than just going forth and thinking it through and realising that it doesn’t work. We just stop." Inua Ellams, British Council. External link Category: Living people Category: 1984 births Category:People from Nigeria Category: Poets from Nigeria Category: Writers