Ayokunle Falomo’s new poetry collection, Autobiomythography of, examines the concepts of decolonization, identity, and truth while also studying the poet’s relationship to self, family, writing, and growth.

Several poems in Autobiomythography of bear the title “Lugard & I” followed by a parenthetical, such as “Lugard & I (Meditation).” In the notes section, Falomo, a University of Michigan alum, describes that these poems “take/borrow/steal/repurpose words, phrases, sentences, images, ideas, etc. from The Diaries of Lord Lugard, Volume 4 as well as the personal journal I kept in 2018, during my residency at MacDowell.” Falomo, who is Nigerian and American, also notes that Frederick Lugard participated in Britain’s colonization of African countries, including Nigeria. These poems, related by title, “are poems through, by which I mean because of, or more accurately, by way of, Lugard.” The first one in the book, “Lugard & I (Ars Poetica),” offers a series of commands and command-like questions:

Count the cost. Ask questions. Are they loud,
the nouns. Do they speak back.
Consider each word as a rider must his horse.
How fit. How strong. Your adjectives,
how trustworthy are they. How much
does each word weigh. Can you account for every one
of them, for every single thing. Consider scale.

Falomo demonstrates this deliberation described in these lines throughout his poems, and in particular, through the references and stories included in his poems.

Family becomes a way to sift through identities and track how people came to be who they are in this book. The poem “Künstlerroman” looks at a mother’s influence and says:

My mother, bee that she is,

buzzes into my ears, loud
enough to restore color

into my petals, says:
Even though dreams

can go into hibernation
during harsh weather,

dreams don’t die.

They are living things.

While these poems contain plenty of “harsh weather,” such encouragement as these lines contain sustain them.

The poems early in the book wonder about personal contexts and whether change is possible. In “On Fire (Or, Last Wishes),” the poet shares that, “I wish I wasn’t born / inside a burning bush. I / was born into a drought / that hasn’t stopped.” The wishes do not provide an easy way out, as the poet goes on to reflect:

I wish to be a child again

but it is for all the wrong
reasons. There is a child

in me who thinks he can
rewrite the history

of his family, his country.
Tell the boy he is wrong.

Tell him he can’t.

As the book carries on, the poems range further and find other ways to relate to the world, as in “A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self,” which asserts that “The center can be anywhere you wish it to be. So wish it.” We see the boy again in the poem “Autobiomythography (Reprise)” – this time with a new perspective:

                                                         & yes, his mother will always
spit the boy out her belly every time he finds himself drowning in
everything that does not bring him joy, as he was when she first held
him. It’s true the boy is no longer a boy, but look: how he sees him-
self, how he sees himself reflected whole. & the mirror: unbroken.

Even though the wishes to be born in other circumstances may not come true, the boy and the poet chart a new path.

Falomo answered questions from Pulp about his poetry collection ahead of a September 27 reading at Ann Arbor’s Literati Bookstore.

Q: When did you study at the University of Michigan? How did your writing evolve during your time in the Helen Zell Writers’ Program?
A: Including the fellowship year, I was at U-M from August 2019 till April 2022. Most of it was spent here in Houston though, away from the Ann Arbor campus, due to the pandemic. I don’t necessarily know that I can speak to the evolution of my writing from before I started the program till when I left because the what and how—and to a certain extent, the why—of my writing didn’t change. However, I was fortunate to have incredibly generous teachers and peers who shared tools and resources with me so I could accomplish the goals I already had for my work. I’ll forever cherish the diversity of voices and styles I encountered while there and the way that was consistently encouraged and embraced. It allowed for a kind of freedom that is, sadly, absent sometimes in the MFA space—if that makes sense.

Q: Your event at Literati on September 27 will also include poets Sara Afshar, Chris Crowder, and Tung-Hui Hu. What are your connections to each other?
A: Sara and Chris are wonderful poets who were in my cohort during my time at HZWP. I’m very excited to be sharing space with them and that I’ll get to hear what they have been working on. Though our works are stylistically different, I share some thematic obsessions with both of them. Also, I admire Sara for the humor in her work and how the speakers of her poems can be casual without being flippant, even as they navigate serious issues that address immigration, war, and family. And in Chris’ work, I love how he portrays God as a vulnerable and earnest Father, sometimes blurring the lines between God and an earthly father to create some interesting tensions for the reader. I am honored that Tung-Hui will be part of the event too, especially because he is, as I am, concerned with history as well as what to make of the self. Though I didn’t get to take any of Tung-Hui’s classes while I was there, my peers talked endlessly about him and shared ideas that ultimately helped me as I was writing Autobiomythography of.

Q: What will the event involve? Will you all read poems? Will you answer questions from each other or from the audience?
A: During the event, we’ll each read poems and Tung-Hui will help moderate a brief conversation, with an opportunity for the audience to ask questions, too.

Q: Let’s turn to your new book. It is always fun to talk about titles. Would you illuminate the title of Autobiomythography of? How did you decide not to add any words after “of”?
A: I am indebted to Audre Lorde for the title since it is inspired by her book, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, which she called a biomythography. In writing my book, keeping in mind the possibilities this new genre had to offer, I took it as an invitation to tell the truth of my life as I have experienced it, without shying away from its fictions and myths. Some of these fictions are inherited, of course, and some are constructed—either consciously or unconsciously. Either way, I wanted to explore what a person is and what a person can be, despite the history of one’s family/country, while moving past the factual, which can sometimes get in the way of Truth. Adding anything after “of” would’ve derailed the vision and mission of the project, as it would’ve communicated some definitiveness which is the opposite of what the book is about. Whatever comes up for each reader after the “of” in the title, it is about that too. I also just love that as it is, on the cover at least, the title can actually be read as Autobiomythography of Ayokunle Falomo.

Q: Several poems are titled “Lugard & I.” The notes at the end of the book describe how Frederick Lugard was involved in Britain’s colonial history and that the poems draw from both The Diaries of Lord Lugard, Volume Four, and your journal. These poems are sprinkled throughout the book. How did you determine their order and where to place them in Autobiomythography of?
A: All thanks to my cohort and thesis advisors; they really helped guide decisions about the order of this collection. There was a thought about having all the “Lugard & I” poems together, which seemed plausible briefly, but ultimately decided it’d be best to have them show up over the course of the collection.

Q: On a similar topic, some collections of poetry are organized by sections, sometimes named and other times not, and other poetry books do not have sections at all. Autobiomythography of does not have sections. Tell us about this choice.
A: Of all the possible ways the book could’ve been organized, the way it is now felt the most right. Breaking it into sections would’ve disrupted the reading experience in a way that I can’t exactly articulate. I think, too, that the organization of the book speaks to the cohesion I am attempting, as it pertains to the self. Due to their disparateness in terms of structure, these are poems that, at first glance, one would not think to put together. And yet.

Q: You make appearances in some of these poems. The poem, “Notes Toward a Conjugated Theory of the Self,” contains the lines, “In this short life, I’ve been so many people I’ll never / get the chance to be. Or meet. Eyokunle Salomo. / Ayokunie. Ayokunle Falmo. Ayokunle / Falomu. Ayokunkle.” How do you show up in these poems?
A: I would say I show up flawed, as I am. I show up gullible. I show up wise, sometimes. I show up funny. I show up vulnerable. I show up imaginative. I show up hurt. I show up as though I am not or can’t be. I show up misnamed, not just by other people but by myself too, during the times I have held others’ perceptions of me, whether good or bad, at a high regard without much consideration for what I thought of myself. I show up determined to rename myself, to reclaim for myself the worth that’s inherent to me by virtue of being born.

Q: Let’s talk about one more poem. The “Motherland Cento” includes lines from each African country. There are no words of your own in this poem, correct? How did you go about finding and organizing these lines into one poem? 
A: No words of mine. Combing through physical anthologies and online archives, I picked lines that resonated with me. The fun part was trying to fit all the lines together in a way that felt cohesive enough as one poem. Informed by the practice of collaging, I am already used to doing that kind of shuffling in my own work. This happens to be, for me, the most exciting part of making a poem—to reference the Greek essence of what poetry actually is—so it wasn’t as challenging as one might expect. Much like the book, it felt impossible when I first had the idea for it, but I am so glad it all worked out. I certainly couldn’t have done any of it by myself.

Martha Stuit is a former reporter and current librarian.

Ayokunle Falomo will discuss his poetry collection, “Autobiomythography of,” on Friday, September 27, at Literati Bookstore, 124 East Washington Street, Ann Arbor. He will be joined by poets Sara Afshar, Chris Crowder, and Tung-Hui Hu.