In a wide-ranging workshop with Lagos Poetrython that felt more like a fireside chat with a literary oracle, award-winning poet Tade Ipadeola offered a masterclass in the art of making, the discipline of writing, and the gift economy that sustains the creative life.
Lagos Poetrython was curated by Micheal Taiwo Oloyode, a poet, writer, and arts curator. An edition of the workshop held on the 27th of June 2026 in Lekki, Lagos.
By Our Arts Correspondent
The room was quiet, save for the scratch of pens on paper and the occasional rustle of pages. At the front, Tade Ipadeola, lawyer, poet, and winner of the 2013 Nigeria Prize for Literature, watched with approval as the attendees settled into their 15-minute writing exercise.
He had set the task with a gentle but firm command: “Just write,” he said, echoing the advice of a famous writer from the film Finding Forrester. “The first time you write, just write. Come back to edit later.”
It was a fitting instruction from a man whose own creative journey had been shaped by discipline, mentorship, and the transformative power of recognition.
Ipadeola: The Burden of Legacy
Ipadeola’s relationship with poetry began, as these things often do, with a father’s expectations. A teacher of literature and French who “tried to make me appreciate literature, my writer and poetry,” his father was determined to cultivate a literary sensibility in his son, even if that meant comparison and competition.
“He will cut, he will do cuttings from newspapers and show me,” Ipadeola recalled, his voice carrying the memory of a childhood annoyance. “The one that used to annoy me the most was his admiration from the poetry of my friend Ogaga Ifowodo.” He recited a line from memory: “Leaves come to a tree so naturally so.”
But it was another poet, Wale Ogunyemi, “now dearly departed,” Ipadeola noted with reverencewho provided the most powerful inspiration. Of Ogunyemi’s poem for Gani Fawehinmi, written when the activist was imprisoned during the military era, Ipadeola recalled: “I said to myself, ‘Why did he write that thing before me? I want to write poems like that. I want my father to do the cutting and keep it.'”
This desire for recognition from a demanding father, from the literary establishment, from history itself would become a driving force in Ipadeola’s career. And it would lead him to one of the most ambitious poetic projects of the 21st century.
Ipadeola: A Testament Born at 34,000 Feet
The genesis of The Sahara Testament, the tome that would earn Ipadeola $100,000 and cemented his place in African literary history was as unexpected as it was serendipitous. “One day I was invited to a poetry event in India,” he said. “When you are flying over the Sahara, daytime, it was so hot that there was no cloud between you in the plane… I saw how vast this place was. The rivers dried up leaving the landscape gehind. You see the river beds, the mountains that nobody has ever mentioned.”
From that vantage point, watching the Sahara unfurl beneath him, inspiration struck. “The idea occurred to me to write something about the Sahara. I wrote the first four stanzas of the Sahara Testament at 34,000 feet in the air.”
The project would take years to complete. Ipadeola described a creative process that was at times solitary, at times collaborative, and always sustained by a community of believers. He ran out of money at one point, was fired from a job, and found himself without a working computer.
“The universe just conspired to make me complete that thing,” he said. A poet friend loaned him a laptop. A benefactor offered support. And a mentor, Niyi Osundare, provided crucial feedback that opened up new vistas in the work.
“He said to me, ‘Why are you always preoccupied with the geography? Why are you not preoccupied with the people who live in this desert and the cultures they have?'” Ipadeola recalled. “I’m telling you, it was like somebody opened a giant door, a new vista.”
This was the moment when The Sahara Testament transformed from a poem about a place into a meditation on culture, resilience, and the linguistic ingenuity of desert peoples. “Do you know that there is a language Tifinagh in North Africa that has the most number of palindromes in the world?” Ipadeola asked. “If you are living in a desert environment, you need to be very efficient. Not just with water, but with everything, with energy. So what did those people do? They found a linguistic solution to an existential problem.”
The Gift Economy of Recognition
Throughout his talk, Ipadeola returned to a central theme: the gift economy that sustains creative work. He recalled Margaret Atwood’s words at an event in Quebec City: “If you’re a writer, you must understand that you run a different economy from everybody else. You run a gift economy.”
“Some people will give you the gift of recognition in the crowd,” Ipadeola said. “Treasure them, because not everybody recognizes your gift. Some will give you the gift of criticism. Recognize them because not everybody will bother to criticize you.”
This was a lesson he had learned early, from the father who would not let him settle for mediocrity, from the teachers who held him to a higher standard, from the mentors who pushed him to go deeper.
But the most important gift, he insisted, is the one you give yourself. “Give yourself the gift of appreciation,” he said. “They say poets are arrogant. It is true, because I have seen some of those things manifest in my life. But I think it is necessary to appreciate yourself to say, ‘I did this.'”
He quoted W.E.B. Du Bois, who argued that the creative portion of the human population is usually about 10%. For Africa, the challenge is particularly acute. “Not only was our gold, silver, timber, everything taken away, but our 10% of talent was also (taken away),” Ipadeola said. “Till date. Till date.”
But he offered a vision of hope, pointing to the work of the workshop’s convener, Taiwo Micheal Oloyede, who has been building a community of writers and creatives. “So Africa eventually will get it, whether these people like it or not. But it is only when the creative 10% come back to give back to society.”
Pattern Recognition and Structure
The workshop itself was a model of the very principles Ipadeola espouses. Before the writing exercise, he spoke about the importance of pattern recognition, the cognitive skill that allows artists make meaning from chaos, to find structure in experience.
“Your heartbeat,” he said. “The Japanese have a theatrical form called Noh where the beats are generally lower than the heartbeat of a regular human. If you have ever been in an audience where Noh is being produced, it creates a totally ethereal, magical sense, you know, that you are in a realm that is not regular human simply because the beat has changed.”
This, he suggested, is what poets do: they alter the rhythm, create the mood, and structure the experience through pattern and form. It’s a gift that cannot be replicated by artificial intelligence. “They will try and break the music down into mathematical units, which the rest of the world is quite good at,” he said. “But we now know that if we have the most advanced AI music machines, it still cannot create mood the way human beings can, which is what the poet does.”
He quoted Robert Frost: “When you write a poem without structure, it is like playing tennis without a net.” And he emphasized that structure, whether in poetry, music, or life, is what makes meaning possible.
A Personal Testimony
Perhaps the most moving moment came when Ipadeola spoke about his own father, the man who had pushed him so hard to achieve. “Around the time he was about to die, he called me,” Ipadeola said. “He said, ‘You know, you are different. You are the writer. You are the keeper of memories.'”
This was, in many ways, the gift that his father had been giving him all along, the gift of recognition. “From when I was very young, he bought me a notebook,” Ipadeola recalled. “I learned the habit of journaling and writing down. So he knows that I’m actually going to write it down. Even the things he told me. ‘He told teachers to give you eight strokes on the back when everybody else gets four, I remember.”
The audience laughed, but there was a poignancy to the moment. This was a story about a father who believed in discipline, in excellence, in the power of the written word to shape a life. And it was a story about a son who had finally understood that the criticism, the expectations, the relentless comparisons, all of it was a form of love.
“So I had to read more books than ever anyway,” Ipadeola concluded with a smile. “And now, when I am 72 or 74 years of age, I will say, like T.S. Eliot, ‘Did I write that?'”
The Making of Poets
The workshop ended with an assignment: 15 minutes of writing, with Ipadeola himself participating. The result was a piece titled “Lagos,”a liquid city, a meridian of memories, a place where the multitudes ebb and flow like tides.
“Vibe city, I feel your fingers lifting notes of grace from my garden box onto the dance floor,” he read.
It was, in its way, a testament to everything he had taught, the importance of writing from your own experience, of honouring your own voice, of recognizing the gifts you have been given and the gifts you have yet to give.
As participants packed up their notebooks and pens, there was a palpable sense of inspiration in the room. These were the gifts of the workshop: not just technical instruction, but a renewed commitment to the practice of poetry, a deeper appreciation for the craft, and a recognition of the power that lies in making things—in using words to shape the world.
After all, as Ipadeola had reminded them, the word “poema” itself means “the making of things.” And in making, there is meaning. In making, there is hope. In making, there is the possibility of transformation, not just of ourselves, but of our communities, our continent, our world.
Profile of the Convener: Taiwo Michael Oloyede
Taiwo Michael Oloyede is a multi-hyphenated artist, curator, and the founder of Lagos Poetrython, the foremost round-the-clock poetry event across West Africa. A poet, spoken word artist, producer, playwright, and scriptwriter, he is driven by a vision to build a vibrant community where Nigerian creatives can dialogue, share stories, and hold honest conversations about socio-political and economic trends in society .
His creative portfolio is extensive. He wrote and produced the play “Wrinkles, dimples, naira and bets” during the Lagos Theatre Festival 2020 in partnership with the British Council . More recently, his play “The Ghost of Rainmakers,” which draws from Yoruba folklore to explore themes of memory and environmental stewardship, was staged in London to critical acclaim . He has also been nominated for the Quramo Writer’s Prize and shortlisted for the Etisalat Flash Fiction Prize .
Beyond his artistic practice, Oloyede is a transmedia content architect, integrated brand marketer, and a fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants . He is the creative director behind diverse didactic and literary events, including the Learning With Celebrities Conference and the Lagos Poetrython Spoken Word Academy, a platform that has trained and guided thousands of youths in literary and artistic development . He describes art as “the ventilation of life” and sees himself not just as a creator, but as a facilitator of the gift economy within the arts .
About Lagos Poetrython
Lagos Poetrython is a multidisciplinary literary platform dedicated to cultivating artistic excellence through poetry, performance, education, and community engagement. Since its inception, the organisation has provided transformative spaces for writers, performers, and cultural practitioners across Africa and beyond.
Through workshops, festivals, readings, and creative laboratories, Lagos Poetrython fosters rigorous engagement with craft while nurturing a vibrant community of artists and thinkers. The organisation is committed to making literary and performance arts accessible to a broad audience, with scholarship programmes ensuring that emerging voices can participate regardless of financial circumstances.
Steering the Craft is the latest edition of the organisation’s acclaimed Language Lab series, which has become a cornerstone of its programming. The series focuses on deepening conversations around artistic excellence while creating pathways for mentorship, collaboration, and creative growth across disciplines.
Lagos Poetrython’s vision is rooted in the conviction that African literature and performance arts have a vital role to play in shaping the continent’s cultural and intellectual future. By bringing together established practitioners and emerging talents, the organisation continues to build a resilient and dynamic creative ecosystem.
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