59 Quotes by Valentine Okolo

Woman,may you always remember your birthright. For you are salt;the jewel of the sea,the maidenwith a thousand shimmers.

You area water nymph from the ocean rising.

YouthYou are the breathof dandelion seeds.An explosion of fresh fuzzinessand abundant zeal,unanchoredby the laborsof this life.

This young maiden,blossoming in the rays of youth,my teeth chalk-white,my breasts, mangoes, ready to be plucked in season, red and ripe.

Your writing has to move you first before you expect it to move someone else. Write what you feel first. Then put it away for a while, and then look at it again with the eyes of a stranger. If you read what you had written earlier with the stranger’s eyes and say to yourself: “Wow! Did I write this?” Then someone else will also be wowed by it as well.

To me words are life. Words carry with them a strong creative force. A force that makes things happen.

I empty my mind. And do something else that is not related to what I am writing about. Sometimes I take long walks, and focus on being in the present. As I walk, I take note of the rise and fall of the land, the diverse faces of people, the roaming animals, and the sounds coming from cars and motorcycles. Most times when I do this ideas flow to me freely, clearing my imaginative inhibitors.

I most times don’t plan a poem in advance. Some poems, if I may use the expression, fall at my feet, almost fully formed. They are a few poems, however, that I do make plans to write in advance. And in order to write them I have to enter into a period of poetic gestation. A period in which I allow the idea of the poem to take root and grow within me until it is ready to be birthed. Sometimes the gestation period may take a few days. Sometimes it can take months or even years.

I like writing organically. So I don’t force anything out. I allow myself to be. I allow myself to feel. I allow the words to come to me like the wind. And I try to catch whatever message that is whispered in the breeze.