Chapbook Chats: Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto Interviews A Failed Attempt at Undoing Memories Author Dare Tunmise
To celebrate KUMI New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set, Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto is talking to poets whose chapbooks are included in the KUMI edition of the wonderful ongoing series. Enjoy this conversation between Chinua and and poet Dare Tunmise.
Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto: Congratulations on the release of your chapbook, A Failed Attempt at Undoing Memories, featured in the 2024 New-Generation African Poets series! Could you share your experience of seeing your work published in this acclaimed series, and what it means to you personally and professionally to be part of this important moment for African poetry?
Dare Tunmise: Thank you so much, Chinua! It’s a beautiful feeling, honestly. It’s surprising how these things unfold, right? One moment, you’re just a curious boy wanting to understand what’s happening with African poetry, and the next, you’re being exposed to the works of the series’ alumni. You read them, you study their work, and you hope to reach that level of talent—or something close to it. Then, on the tenth anniversary of the series, you get that beautiful email saying you’ve been selected as part of the year’s cohort.
For me, it’s an incredible honor. It feels like validation for all the years I’ve spent honing my craft, and it’s especially meaningful because this chapbook deals with such intimate, complex themes like memory, identity, and loss. To have it recognized within the context of the New-Generation African Poets is not something I take for granted.
Professionally, it’s a huge milestone. Being part of a series that has produced some of the most exciting voices in African poetry is beyond anything I could have imagined when I started writing. It opens up so many possibilities for future work, collaborations, and reaching wider audiences. More than that, it feels like a responsibility to continue contributing to the growing body of African poetry and to honor the legacy of this series.
C. E-O: How did you arrive at the title for your chapbook?
Dare Tunmise: I think the title emerged from my persistent engagement with the complexities of memory. In writing the book, I was constantly confronted with the idea that memories, once formed, are almost impossible to completely erase or alter. They persist, sometimes in ways that are unexpected, distorted, or even haunting. The title reflects my struggle and the futility of trying to undo or rewrite that past.
C.E-O: Can you talk about the organisation and how you chose the poems included in A Failed Attempt at Undoing Memories?
Dare Tunmise: The organization and selection was a natural, yet deliberate process aimed at reflecting the complexities and nuances of memory that I explore throughout the book. When I was selecting the poems, I focused on creating a cohesive narrative arc that would take the reader on a journey through the various facets of memory—its beauty, its pain, and its persistent influence on our lives.
I began by identifying the central themes I wanted to interrogate, such as the tension between remembering and forgetting, the resilience of memories, and the emotional impact they have on identity. From there, I chose poems that best embodied these themes, ensuring that each one contributed to the overall narrative I wanted to build.
C.E-O: The preface of the chapbook is written by the wonderful Botswana poet, Tjawangwa Dema. She describes your work as that which “…contends with memory in two ways simultaneously, as both an archiving site and a project of failure.” I also found out that you are a software developer. I know this field also works with storage, computation, and imputation—a connection to memory. Can you talk more about the use and implications of memory’s complexity and resilience in the chapbook?
Dare Tunmise: I think memory, both in software development and in poetry, serves as a crucial element of creation and understanding. As a software developer, you work with data, which essentially is a form of memory. These data are stored, retrieved, and manipulated to create something functional and meaningful. I think this process is not unlike how we interact with our personal and collective memories in poetry.
Now, let’s talk about exploring memory as both an ‘archiving site’ and a ‘project of failure,’ as Tjawangwa Dema beautifully describes, which simply tells us that memory is not just a static repository of the past; it’s active, dynamic, and often imperfect. It involves constant revision and reinterpretation, much like how software updates and evolves over time.
In programming, when data is processed, it can sometimes become corrupted or lost or simply run into an error—a kind of failure that requires correction and this is why developers often make allowances for exception or error handling in their algorithm. Similarly, in poetry, I grapple with the idea that memory is inherently fallible. The act of recalling or recording memory can never fully capture the original experience, yet it’s in this very imperfection that new meanings and connections emerge.
In the chapbook, I use this understanding to engage with memory not just as a theme, but as a process—an ongoing negotiation between preservation and loss.
C.E-O: In “Ode To My Mother”, the lines “The mark on the almanac on the wall says it’s three years since the fire, and here you are, Mother, / asleep with the calmness of a rod ready to create a path in the sea” struck me in such a way as I also remember my father whom I lost in 2005 to cancer. What does this touching, grief poem mean to you? Is the poem also a way of enshrining the relationship between you and your mother?
Dare Tunmise: I’m deeply touched that the poem resonated with you and reminded you of your father. We should be grateful that poetry has the power to sieve through our individual experiences and create a rally point. I wrote the poem as an acknowledgement of my mother’s effort raising me especially at those times when my health was bad, the many dramas that I put her through and her concerns. The language I was looking for was one of appreciation, a salute to the stress even though I still feel a sense of failure at fully articulating my intention.
C.E-O: “Dear Departed” is a poem of commiseration, and also a poignant reflection on loss, exile, and the memories of friends who have departed. Friends include those lost in wars, swallowed by the sea, and killed soldiers. While writing this poem, how did you shape its emotional landscape?
Dare Tunmise: “Dear Departed” is that type of poem that writes itself as I didn’t really struggle with it. The poem leveraged on the fact that I was having this confluence of conflicting thoughts and emotions realizing that I was losing a lot of my friends to distance and migration, both forced and voluntary, and it’s happening in the sense that we may not have the opportunity to exist in close geography again. It was that sense of loss and the reality of departure dawning on me even in my reluctance to accept the situation that drew the mood of the poem.
C.E-O: Almost all the poems in this collection hinge on memory, grief, loss, resilience, and harsh realities faced by immigrants. I am interested in hearing more about the emotional and physical toll of exile and loss as written in the poem “Of Strangers and Bleeding Bones.”
Dare Tunmise: A few hours ago, I was on an interstate train traveling and I happened to be discussing the issue of migration with a stranger sitting next to me. They were reading a copy of Samuel Kolawole’s the road to the sea salt, a book on the plight of migrants crossing the desert and mediterranean to Europe and this prompted a discussion on our collective concern on the issue of global migration. The subject of migration is not a subtle one regardless of the channel we choose to discuss it, and it is more brutal if we’re talking about the realities of migrants undergoing forced migration, it reminds me of Warsan Shire’s “No one leaves one.” I wrote “of strangers and Bleeding Bones” as a way of empathizing with victims of a violent xenophobic attack on Nigerians in South Africa in 2020. It was my way of mourning, aware of the possibilities of my friends and families who could have been subjected to such realities.
C.E-O: The poem “Flowers and Dark Rooms” reflects on both personal memories and broader societal issues, such as the struggles faced by boys and girls in your community. How do you balance these personal and collective experiences in your writing?
Dare Tunmise: I think both experiences shape each other as they are often deeply intertwined. I also believe that our individual experiences are influenced by the environment we live in—the society, community, the history that shroud us. In the poem, I try to capture how our personal or individual struggles don’t exist in isolation, how they are often a reflection of larger societal issues.
Moreover, I think the struggles that inform or became the backdrop of my personal reflections, that informed the poem are not particularly unique to me, I believe quite a lot of young Nigerians feel the same if we examine it on a larger context.
Chinụa Ezenwa-Ọhaeto is an Igbo and Nigerian poet, fiction and nonfiction writer, and essayist, exploring the themes of culture, religion, lineage, ancestry, divination (dibia afa), post-colonialism, migration and the complexities of existence. His full- length poetry collection, The Naming, will be out on December 1, 2025 with African Poetry Book Fund via Nebraska press. The Naming explores the movements, excesses, and extremes of existing as a postmodern individual, connecting these experiences to familial ancestry and lineage.