Love is fine for singing about and love songs are good to listen to, sometimes even to dance to. But when we need food for our stomachs and clothes for our backs, love is nothing. Ah my lady, the last man any woman should think of marrying is the man she loves.

Soyinka's Death at Dawn, Auden's Musée des Beaux Arts, Stevie Smith's Not Waving but Drowning and Wislawa Szymborska's Some People come to mind immediately. But there are plenty, plenty more that I enjoy.

At the age of 15, a teacher had asked me what I wanted to do for a career, and without knowing why or even how I replied that I wanted to be a poet.

O yes, everyone gets lonely some time or other. After all, if we look closer into ourselves, shall we not admit that the warmth from other people comes so sweet to us when it comes, because, we always carry with us the knowledge of the cold loneliness of death?

Once an interesting idea or theme occurs to me then I would want to write a poem about it. The rest, frankly, is not difficult.

For us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and authoritarianism. It is understandable why the African artist is utilitarian.

No matter what anybody says, we can't have it all. Not if you are a woman. Not yet.