"Tolu Oloruntoba’s voice in The Junta of Happenstance is at once thoughtful and authoritative, metaphorically rich and lyrically surprising. Oloruntoba’s language travels through history and myth to speak to today and engage with a future transformed by new understanding. The combination of craft and spirit cuts a fine place for this debut work, expanding our literary view."—2021 Peer Assessment Committee
Tolu Oloruntoba spent his early career as a primary care physician. He currently manages virtual health projects, and has lived in Nigeria, the United States, and Canada. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, while his debut chapbook, Manubrium, was a bpNichol Chapbook Award finalist. The Junta of Happenstance is his first full-length collection of poetry. He lives in the metro area of Coast Salish lands known as Vancouver.
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The Junta of Happenstance is your first full-length collection of poetry. How does it feel to be recognized with a Governor General’s Award at this early point in your career?
Thanks, Trevor. I suppose it is early in my career, since I hope to have a long one, but I have been writing poetry since 2001 (although I am glad all my earlier attempts to put out a full-length book failed, because I wasn’t ready). But to answer your question, and if I can be honest, it has been surreal and a little terrifying. Dionne Brand, Anne Carson, and so many other lights have won this award. I am not even slightly close to being credibly considered their peer. So I feel greatly honoured, but I also find myself wondering what it all means. I understand the metaphor of the runaway train a little better now. I didn’t really expect anything much to come after having the book published. I thought I’d have a few readers, which would have been satisfactory.
What aspect of the work did you find most challenging?
Putting the notes and acknowledgments together was the most challenging aspect for me. I was so afraid that I would forget someone I needed to acknowledge, or a reference I needed to cite, that I just kept going. Perhaps that’s why they covered seven pages in the final book!
At a time of so many concurrent global crises, what does poetry offer the world?
If poetry is the voice of fidelity to truth and possibility, then it remains vital to every era of human life. I can respond in terms of what poetry offers me, a person who often feels crushed by and helpless in the downward spiral of the world. Reading poetry frequently shows me I am not alone; I feel kinship with those whose words I live in, however briefly. When I feel frozen with ennui, it moves me: literally, changes my state of mind. When I cannot cope (with anxiety, for instance, like at the start of the pandemic when longer-form work was impossible because my attention-span was non-existent), I can hide in it. It sharpens my moral conscience. It enriches my empathy. It puts my inchoate thoughts into words. It gives me unexpected chuckles and laughs out loud. It exposes me to the beauty of the word, and the world. It makes me cynical of easy fixes and forces me to look deeper. It shows me nothing is above scrutiny, and questioning. It extends my awareness of how differently things can be said. And when I have been reading enough of it, it clarifies my words and helps me see the world clearer and describe it better. I believe these gifts of poetry are available to anyone else. Writing poetry is often, for me, like withdrawing the sting the world has left in me. I often feel I have unburdened myself and can set some problems aside, when I have written about them. Because the human brain dislikes unsolved equations, the poems that come to me are often recent solutions in a long-lasting internal dialogue as I attempt to solve conundrums. I believe poetry can help us cope, and when its insights make us better people, it can help us intervene differently in the world.
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