Titilope Sonuga From Sagamu- Nigeria-Becomes Edmonton’s Ninth Poet Laureate

Titilope Sonuga From Sagamu- Nigeria-Becomes Edmonton’s Ninth Poet Laureate

Titilope Sonuga, a University of Alberta-trained civil engineer and mother of a newborn daughter, is to become Edmonton’s ninth poet laureate starting July 1.

Titilope a thorough bred Nigerian from Sagamu is the last of the four girls by her parents. She took to poetry after her first degree in Civil Engineering . Her Father is also a civil engineer  of ENPLAN Engineering Company in Lagos.

Her mum was a pioneer Registrar Nigeria French Language Village Ajara Badagry before the family relocated to Canada in 1998.

Among her plans for the two-year position: bring a little tenderness and healing back into our lives

Titilope Sonuga Now Edmonton’s Ninth Poet Laureate.

A mesmerizing spoken word performer, playwright, actor and author of three collections of poetry, the 35-year-old Nigerian-Canadian poet has run poetry workshops around the globe for adults and youth alike, locally founding the Breath in Poetry Collective — an extension of her collaborative and sharing nature — and in 2015 was the first poet to appear at a Nigerian presidential inauguration. She’s even scripted global advertising campaigns for The World Health Organization, Google and The Bill and Melinda Gates Corporation.

Her voice, cadence and words are full of calm and encouragement, and speaking to her in advance of today’s official announcement, she frequently laughs with real pleasure at the cooing and gurgling of the month-old baby in her arms, who already has many things to say herself.

“I’d always had a love, an interest,” she explains of how she became a full-time artist. “I’d written stories and poems just for fun. But education, going into a serious career, was kind of a priority for me, the child of immigrants. And pursuing a career in the arts at the time didn’t seem like it was something that was reasonable. So I just kind of put it on the back burner as a hobby that I was pursuing, and went off and did the serious thing as an engineer.

“But I feel like the arts sort of chased me down anyway,” she says, now honoured to be able to give something back in that realm. “It just feels really lovely to be able to serve the city, because I feel like Edmonton’s quite responsible for a lot of my success.

“A lot of my discovery around my work in the arts happened right here in the city, with high school teachers and people who encouraged me to work, and going to open mics and cafes that existed all over — so it feels very full circle.”

“One of the main things that I spoke about through the selection process is that I feel like the city — the world, really — is in a really huge moment of healing. And I think that the role of artists and poets right now is to be a healing balm on the world.”Sonuga is working on something she calls her Cathedral of Tenderness, a collective project, starting digitally, which will collect and amplify submitted examples of hope sourced from the general public.“I’ve been trying to look through this thing,” she says of the fraught last year or so, “at these tender moments that have saved my life. And it’s in friendships that I’ve nurtured, even with the distance. It’s in time with my children. It’s in books that I’ve read.”

Online, she’ll invite submissions to what she calls a “giant, found poem — a team piece — where people are able to send in these bite-sized, magical poetry moments of things that have saved them.”

These might include audio clips, notes, haiku poetry — any form of connective communication, really — which she hopes to ultimately pull together in a gallery setting.

“Almost like we’re creating a cathedral or a shrine,” she says. “Or an installation of what we survived in the last couple of years.”

The poet laureate position is supported jointly by the Edmonton Arts Council, the City of Edmonton and the Edmonton Public Library, and will include a number of public performances.

In the past, Sonuga has had a violin player accompany her spoken word recitals.

“It’s important for me to give people a diversity of sound,” she explains. “There are hardcore poetry fans who will listen to you just read a poem, or read the phone book,” she laughs.

“But there are also people who are sort of new to this world of performance poetry — but they know music. It was an entry point for people who I felt could be drawn into the poetry.”

Sonuga takes over from Nisha Patel, the laureate for the past two years.

“Edmonton’s poetry community is big, but also quite small,” Sonuga notes. “I’ve known every one of the poet laureates who served. Nisha Patel is somebody who I’ve known from the Breath In Poetry Collective. Ahmed Ali, Mary Ponkoski, Alice Major — I know all of them, shared spaces with them, and I’ve gotten to marvel at the work they did.

“One thing that rings true for all of them is that they just brought themselves to the work. I guess the instruction for me is to just bring my whole self, my true self, into the work and that that will be enough.

“I just, honestly, feel quite grateful to be a part of this community, and how diverse and wildly different each poet that served in that role is — but all kind of speaking to the same unifying force, which is the power of art.”