"I HAD RECEIVED FOUR REJECTION EMAILS THAT SANK ME NECK DEEP INTO FLASH DEPRESSION." - ISAIAH ADEPOJU

 BY; Mercy Ojegbola

Isaiah Adepoju is a writer from Osogbo. A fellow of two national writing residencies and the UNDERTOW Poetry Fellowship, UK.

He is a recipient of the Donald E Waterfall Scholarship Fund, the Akachi Chukwuemeka Prize for Literature, and the Lagos London Poetry Prize. 

He published his debut novel in the UK in 2024, and he is a final-year student of Literature-in-English at Obafemi Awolowo University.

In this interview with NCB's Mercy Ojegbola, he talks about his fears, his writing journey, the weight of rejection, and the quiet persistence that keeps him at his desk.

NCB: You mentioned one time in an interview that you started writing at the age of 17. Was there a single book, person, or moment that sparked it?

Isaiah: 17 is merely speculative. But it was a circumstance that sparked my interest. I was 2 years out of high school, and I had too much time. So, I began with math. I solved math a lot then, out of boredom, read a brilliant novel, Faces of Naira by Maryam Ali. That changed it for me.

NCB: Was there a time when writing felt impossible since you started?

Isaiah: It always feels impossible. In fact, it was easier at the start. It felt possible. But now, I am often terrified by the idea of writing.

NCB: Well, what do you think makes you terrified by the idea of writing?

Isaiah: The rigor of writing down the imagination, of the honesty of writing things down as they seem true to one, and the worry whether one will eventually write, now or ever. I try to write every day. But each time I try to write, I am confronted with a blank page, and my head is absolutely empty of words.

NCB: How do you handle this feeling?

Isaiah: I write. I take long strolls. I stay indoors. It’s difficult most of the time, keeping in all this feeling without normalizing casual, outdoor explosions. But I do all I can.

NCB: How do you keep up with writing and publishing as a student?

Are there particular rituals you keep to protect your writing time?

Isaiah: This is a question I have been asked repeatedly and have repeatedly tried to evade because I don’t know how to answer it. It’s like being asked how one can eat amidst all the violence of society.

NCB: Waoo! I guess it comes naturally, then. You're the current general secretary of the department of English, OAU. Have you always been interested in politics, or was there a motivation for it ?

Isaiah: I thought I could do more things, not with politics, but as the General Secretary of the department. So, in a way, the need to work is my motivation. Without honest work, there can hardly be progress. 

NCB: Do you think this political involvement, so to speak, can influence what or how you write?

Isaiah: I anticipate this influence. I am always so clinical and cynical of the things I write so I can trap this influence, especially in how I do my writing.

NCB: Let's talk about your debut novel, “Happiness is a Sickle-kinikan in my Belly”. How long did it take you to put such an idea and imagination together before publication?

Isaiah: The first draft didn’t take very long. The second took longer. Months of spurious rewrites. Also, the style of the writing demanded speed.

NCB: After publishing your first novel, did you ever fear being boxed as “just a novelist” or did you at any point feel the need to limit your creative expression to prose writing?

Isaiah: Funnily enough, it’s the inverse with me. People often see me as a poet more than a novelist or a prose fiction writer. I want it to change. Or, specifically, I don’t want to be boxed as a poet. In fact, I think I’m a better essayist.

NCB: You recently got awarded the “Donald E. Waterfall Scholarship Fund”. What does that mean to you personally?

Isaiah: I still can’t quantify the feeling. Sadness missed with fear. Excitement with anxiety. It's a kind of paradoxical feeling since. But one thing is common: I feel very honored. This is a big step to my writing.

NCB: What part of it brings sadness mixed with fear and why?

Isaiah: The fact of being called serious in some other local circles frightens me, but also saddens me because I don’t know what to do with this fact.

NCB: Have you ever had to deal with rejection letters or failed submissions ? How did you handle it, and what would you tell someone facing that now?

Isaiah: Thank you. I receive so many rejections, by the way. Too many for my age. Before I received the news of that scholarship, I had received four rejection emails that sank me neck-deep into flash depression. I was awake most of the night contemplating my life as a writer. I'm just being fed up. Disinterested. The joy of my work brought me back to writing. I was excited when I received news of the scholarship award. But then, an hour later, I just returned to my desk, writing and thinking about my work. I handle rejections and acceptances by focusing on my work. In all cases, the work is prior.

NCB: Do you work well in isolation, or are you invested in community and mentorship as a writer?

How has your approach helped your creative expression ?

Isaiah: I work well in both isolation and community and mentorship. Both are vital to my work. The Association of Nigerian Authors-OAU, for instance, has been instrumental to my growth. We meet every week to talk art. The bulk of my productivity comes from our discussions there. So, I utilize my isolation well, partly because I already have things to ponder on, things to comprehend by writing about them. What this does is double my creative output and complicate the streams of influence and responses in my writing.

NCB: When you look at your body of work so far, are there threads or emotions connecting them? What are they?

Isaiah: I think love is a thing, a strange thing connecting my work. Love is at the base of everything else. Most times, that love is dark, humorless, but love, nonetheless. Odd love between odd people. My love for my city. My love for this and that and etcetera.

NCB: Do you ever think about how your writing contributes to the body of African literature, or do you just create and let it find its place?

Isaiah: The latter option. African literature is too enormous a subject for any 22-year-old.

NCB: Enormous indeed. Recognitions and achievements are what we see, what’s the hardest part of your journey as a writer that people don’t see?

Isaiah: The burden of stories.

NCB: Is there anything you wish you knew about writing earlier ?

Isaiah: That acceptances and rejections are always secondary. The work is always the most vital.

NCB: When you look back at your journey so far, from publishing your first novel to winning Donald E. Waterfall Scholarship Fund. What does growth mean to you now?

Isaiah: Growth means a daily commitment to writing. A play on ideas. Experimentation. Really loving the idea of writing. This is growth to me.

NCB: How has growth affected your writing, changed how you see yourself, your faith, and the world around you?

Isaiah: My own play on ideas is helping me see the works of other writers more clearly. The beauty and the working rigor of sentences. The tightknit plot, the fresh image, the entire network of things at play in a book. In a book I read recently, Arundhati Roy’s novel, The God of Small Things, the relationship of two young Indian children— Estha and Rachel— to the English language mirrors my own childhood. Reading the book is helping me understand how the instrument of the English language is reshaping my experience of the world. For example, today I translated a simple, common childhood riddle into English, which went as: The forever cock of my father, the forever cock of my father, it eats money not corn, what is it? 

Translation from Yoruba to English seems to poeticise the English words. But this process is made apparent because, in writing and reading, one is conscious of one’s self in the world and one’s relationship to it.

NCB: And finally, what would you say to young writers who are still trying to find their voice and their place in the literary world?

Isaiah: Keep on doing your work. And be able to defend it.

NCB: Thank you very much, Isaiah. I really appreciate this. We've come to the end of the interview. 

Isaiah: You’re welcome. Thank you so much for the interview.