Amara Okonkwo-Bassey’s diary on poetry, homesickness, and one genuinely moving audience reaction
I’ve performed this specific poem maybe a dozen times now, worked and reworked until I thought I understood exactly what it did to a room, and tonight, for the first time, a woman I’d never met came up afterward with genuinely wet eyes, saying the poem had described her own grandmother’s kitchen so precisely she’d assumed, briefly, that I must somehow know her family.
What the Poem Actually Describes
A specific Lagos kitchen, a specific smell of stew reduced too long on a low flame, a specific argument between two aunts that never quite resolved across an entire childhood, details I’d assumed were mine alone, too particular to genuinely resonate beyond my own memory.
Why This Reaction Genuinely Surprised Me
I think there’s a common, reasonable fear among writers working from deeply specific personal memory, that the specificity itself might alienate readers who didn’t share the exact experience, rather than drawing them in. Tonight complicated that fear considerably, a woman with an entirely different family, entirely different specific memories, finding her own grandmother inside my particular one.
The Conversation That Followed
We talked for nearly twenty minutes after the set ended, comparing kitchens, comparing aunts, finding genuine overlap in the emotional shape of our respective memories even as the specific details diverged considerably, hers set in a different city entirely, mine unmistakably Lagos.
What This Taught Me About Writing From Specificity
I think the deeper you go into genuine, particular memory, counterintuitively, the wider the actual resonance becomes, since specificity carries an emotional truth that vague, general writing simply can’t access. Tonight was a genuinely useful, moving reminder of exactly why I keep writing this way, however exposing it occasionally feels.
Where This Poem Goes Next
I’m including it in the small collection I’ve been slowly building, more confident now than I was walking into tonight’s set that this particular, deeply personal piece has genuine reach well beyond my own specific memory of that kitchen. Further diary entries continue at bohiney.com, with the original piece live at prat.uk.
SOURCE: https://prat.UK/