#29 Àjọkẹ́ Bọ́dúndé, writer & editor
'Whenever the writing bug bites.'
Àjọkẹ́ Bọ́dúndé is a Nigerian writer and editor. Her work draws from the well of Yorùbá tradition, rooted in a vibrant celebration of womanhood as whole and powerful. Through poetry, she aims to engage in conversations around gender, power, societal structures, and exclusion. Her work explores the experiences of women, their complex and multigenerational relationships with one another, and the patriarchy. Àjọkẹ́’s poetry has appeared in Aké Review (2017), The White Review (2023) and is forthcoming in Black Joy Unbound: An Anthology (2023). She has been shortlisted for the Merky New Writers’ Prize (2019) and The White Review Poet’s Prize (2023). Àjọkẹ́ obtained a bachelor’s degree in law from Durham University and an MSc in Gender Studies from The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). In recent times, she has begun working on her debut collection of poems and long form narrative threading through familial experiences to give prose to the realities of young women navigating personhood and notions of freedom in cultures where autonomy is taboo.
Where do you write?
Inside moving vehicles, on a desk or in bed.
What can we always find on your desk?
Books and sticky notes.
Morning writer or late-night words?
Whenever the writing bug bites.
Coffee, tea, nibbles?
Tea.
What's your most tempting distraction?
Music.
What's that we hear on the speakers?
Nothing. Multi-tasking is not my forte.
Have you got any pre-writing rituals?
Reading, a lot of thinking and gazing.
Perfect bookshop to hide on a rainy day?
The closest one.
What's your most treasured book?
There are two of them: Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi and Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi.
Favourite word in the English language?
Hieroglyphics.
Dream writing location?
Oprah’s garden.
Three writers (dead or alive) to have dinner with?
Maya Angelou, Sylvia Wynter, and bell hooks.
One poem that has changed your life:
Be Nobody’s Darling by Alice Walker.