the work of carrying myself

It was the early 2000s. Jos, Plateau State in Central Nigeria was a kettle rattling off steam and all else. The yolk-yellow of the sun in Rukuba seeped into the hospital room that noon as my mother brought me forth. I had the same honey-brown skin and rolling tongue as my father, she recalls. I came into the world with a frown, my eyes thankless for being born.

poetry and the making of a girl

I learned early that words could change the temperature of a room. As a child, whenever I cried, someone would hand me a pen and paper. I would stop crying and start writing. I soon realized that language and by effect, poetry, could make the world more tolerable, less nebulous.

Oma is Loud

I perform poetry under the stage name Oma is Loud.

“Loud” here is not necessarily about volume but about audibility: about being heard. It is my response to cultural habits that have foisted my lips with the multi-layered silences of social conformity. Oma is Loud is my way of saying I intend to be heard, clearly, fully and on purpose.e.

on possessing an artful soul

Something about being an eldest daughter has shaped my way of seeing: an attentiveness to life and its rituals. In reaching toward art, I have fallen headfirst into poetry, theatre, dance, and music. Storytelling, for me, has always meant working across forms, letting each medium carry what the others cannot.