Tolu Agbelusi: on Locating Strongwoman - a collection of poems
“I am all the things I give myself permission to be,” poet, performer and educator Tolu Agbelusi told me, toward the end of our Zoom conversation about her beautiful poetry debut, Locating Strongwoman. The book is an attempt at defining oneself as a woman, beyond stereotypes and with incredible authenticity. “All my life, I was always in the margins,” she added, I always felt in between, I couldn’t be pigeon-holed by anyone and I don’t need to be.” An experience that her poem ‘What Exactly Do You Want To Know’ addresses.
Born in Nigeria, raised in Britain from 14 years old, trained as a lawyer in the UK and France, Tolu also lived in the Caribbean and is now based in London. “I’ve often felt like people put others in boxes and in my case it was not to include me, as a Black woman for instance, but to exclude me.” She was even told that she wasn’t African enough after some live shows. Yet these experiences only helped her to define who she wanted to be.
Growing up in Nigeria, her mother was an English teacher, so Tolu was always exposed to books. And poetry became a way for her to cultivate her inner world, especially when they moved to England and she was preparing for her A Levels. “Then I used to write as a way to escape. I created a personal world not to be discovered by anyone. For my A Level in French, I chose to study a poems on ‘Negritude’ by Aimé Césaire and Léon Damas: it had a huge impact on me. So had books like Daughters of Africa by Margaret Busby and poems by Maya Angelou.”
She started writing so much that at 25 years old, she did her first poetry performance, at Poetry in Motion in London. Then she left for Paris to pursue a law degree and started working. “Poetry found me again when I was unemployed and depressed. Soon, I thought it was more than just a hobby and I started to take much more time to write but also to read like a writer. It became a necessity for me: the more I did it, the more I felt good at it.” It also became a means to empower herself and others. “Language is power,” Tolu said, “I now teach poetry too and use performance as a tool to express myself.”
Her poems also address a lot of taboos, and Tolu does feel that – whether in England, France or Nigeria – certain conversations are very difficult to have, about identity, femininity and togetherness, because some people are not expecting her to speak about race, gender or relationships as freely as she does. “I definitely had to break a few doors down. I spent a lot of nights going to poetry events, waiting for flyers about the next events, dragging my friends who didn’t even like poetry for support. And after many open mic events, people started to ask me to come again. But of course, I still face barriers, in bigger events, in certain institutions. That’s also why I created my own events, Home Is…”
The poems that we find in Locating Strongwoman were created over all these years of writing and performing, plunging into her emotional self. “I’m a storyteller,” Tolu added. “Some of these stories are my stories; others are inspired by people I know or read about, but together they form a character that I am, sometimes powerful, other times not that strong, but all these emotions are true.” She beautifully addresses motherhood, family links, love but also consent, pain and silence. The poem ‘How It Begins’ was for instance inspired by the experience of a student during a sexual assault. “They all reflect different levels of strength, Tolu reflected. “There are the multiple versions of me, because no one is ever one thing only.” And her whole book beautifully illustrates this experience, as I’m sure many readers - like myself - will delightfully find out.
