The Sound of Kindness: I Echo on Writing and Humanity

An interview by Akal Mohan in Kenya with I Echo in Ghana.

Akal: Hi Chris. Hi, I Echo. I am not sure what name you prefer, but that gives me my first question. Years ago, when I used to read lots of self-help books, I came across a line, I can’t remember who wrote it, but it claimed that the most beautiful word(s) to anyone is their name. I somewhat understand the burden of a name, its enchantment, its curse, its joy. I know a number of Chris’, but I only know one I Echo. When do you decide on I Echo over Chris?

 Where does the name I Echo even come from?

I Echo: Hi Akal. I just smiled at the thought. It sounds funny right now but the pen name I Echo came from heaven. Like one morning after a prayer session, a voice from heaven fell into my head and told me to create under the name— to echo. In every personal interaction I make, I try to introduce myself as Chris. Chris Baah. But, when I am speaking to you as a writer, I want you to see me as I Echo. Kinda like, Chris the man, I Echo the writer/editor. Another reason why I prefer this split is because I am also a construction worker and I wanted that life and my life as a writer to be away from each other. Writing under the pen name I Echo gives me a freedom to be, a freedom to express myself, a kind that is untethered from the rigidity that comes with my position as a construction worker. & oh, just to add, I felt really disconnected from my work when I used to write under Chris Baah; very much different now.

Akal: Interesting that you bring up freedom. Freedom to be. Freedom to express, a “kind that is untethered from the rigidity that comes with my position as a construction worker”. I have been thinking about obliteration and liberation - in this context, obliteration to mean substitution. How does it feel whenever Chris has to exist for I Echo to emerge? Is it like a transfiguration? 

And, science defines echos as a reflection of sound.  Are you able to reflect sound?

I Echo: Reflect sound? Ha! I wish I was made of metal or glass—something that could reflect sound—sadly, the farthest reach to what humans can do most times, is to live in metaphors. This echo that I am is more about people/culture/beliefs and less about sound really. To echo all that is unique to me as a boy born in Bundu, Port Harcourt, Nigeria, same boy who is now a young man trying to grow his life somewhere in Ghana, same young man who despite every failing has a core that is hewn by the love of Christ—do you know that Chandler Moore song, “He Understands”? I won’t feel guilty, Christ gave me space to be what He made me.

I am trying to figure out what exactly you might mean when you say, “Chris has to exist for I Echo to emerge.” I am crossed. Whether you wanted to say “exist” or “exit.” For Chris to exist for I Echo to emerge, I must tell you, I cannot say exactly how it works. But I can tell you that I compartmentalise a lot. The Chris my sister knows is not the Chris a friend knows, and the Chris this friend knows is quite likely not going to be the Chris another friend knows. I do not mean to say that I have a split personality, though. What I mean is, I have this ability to be whatever you’d like me to be, and Chris understands that in order to create freely, I Echo has to exist, and so I Echo does. On the other hand, for Chris to exit for I Echo to emerge, come to think of it, the answers I gave for “to exist” will sit fine. How did I think they could mean two different things?

Akal: I meant exit. I wanted to know how Chris leaves and I Echo walks in, takes a seat in front of a blank page, and writes. I wanted to know whether I Echo still holds the biases of Chris. I guess my struggle is, and has always been, the multiple lives of artists. Do you ever find it hard inhabiting the lives of your characters?

About Chandler Moore, I have never listened to him. I should. His lyrics are, seemingly, profound: I won’t feel guilty, Christ gave me space to be what He made me. Since I quit the church I haven’t had time to interrogate the grandness of Christ in my life. He, according to Christian theology,  is God The Son, to mean he was involved in creation, and this could partly explain his role as our intercessor. As a creator yourself, do you ever intercede for your characters? As you occupy their lives, do you ever give them space to love, lose, win, mess, et cetra?

I Echo: It seems like I am having a giggle at every question you ask, Akal. How do I tell you that I am every persona/character I create in my work? How do I also tell you that the writer and the work are as separate as clothing and skin? Let me see if I can explain how I contradict myself.

Firstly, allow me to be foolishly full of myself to say, I am as Louise Glück and her autobiographical poetry and other times, I am not.

Before I can write any story, it has to mean something to me. An experience already had or would-be or would-like-to-be. Some time ago, I was working on something for my people at Writers Space Africa, and in a conversation, a writer told me, sometimes to get your story to work, take a walk with it. He had meant that when you hit a point where you can no longer see your story—a writer's block (whatever that means), take a walk, some fresh air to clear your mind. However, my mind made new meaning to what he had said. That, I had to actually walk in every story I write in order to make it work. Soak myself so much in it that I and that story becomes one. 

Chris loves TV. Have you seen Sean Bean’s Legends? It’s a pity it got cancelled, but the main character in that show, for every case he had to work in, he had to create a unique identity for each case. Each case. I like to think that when it comes to my writing, I may not be so different from Sean Bean’s Martin Odum. Something I learnt from one of the workshops in the recent Ußwali Masterclass was to let go of my biases when I create a character. To humanise them enough. I may write a story about an unbalanced age-gap relationship between a man and a woman. I may humanise everything, but I could leave or not leave an easter egg that could make you know that “Chris was here.” 

I noticed recently that after I abandon—what I call finish writing—a work, I am as tired as a wet towel. I do not enjoy this tiredness. But would I do it again? Yes! Again and again, like that towel after drying. So, no. I do not find it hard inhabiting/interceding for the lives of any of my characters. They are me, and I am them. It is so useless for me to not witness my life. I offer my characters the same kindness—to be human.

Akal: I’ll tell you this: I care about contradictions. I care about how contradictions prove that humans are malleable and that their perceptions evolve. So, you trying to explain your contradictions is okay. Always will.

You have mentioned  Louise Glück, and I am now thinking of her poem, The Untrustworthy Speaker and how, in the last stanza, she says, That’s why I am not to be trusted/ Because a wound to the heart/ Is also a wound to the mind.  I am not good at memorising and reciting poems, but this stanza is one that I flex with whenever people ask me about her. 

I am a homebody. I laze a lot in bed if I’m not working. I only recently started walking as a writing practice after listening to the Ugandan writer A.K Kaiza talk about how walking helps a writer pace their mind. I should now learn how to walk with the stories I am writing. Curiously, what’s the craziest idea you have gathered while walking?

Something about kindness, Chris. Do you mind preaching more on it? Earlier, when I told you that I had been thinking about obliteration and liberation, honestly, I was thinking of ways that my ‘captors’ can literally be obliterated. There are characters with whom I never want to empathise. Tell me, how is it possible to still extend humanity to a man who orders the killings of innocent citizens? I bet if I were to write the story of our president, I would want to write him as an animal-something with no heart. How do you manage to capture such flaws as humanly as possible?

I Echo: Oh, Akal. There is a violence in my blood. A fire that requires constant taming, to always try to remain calm. I try not to involve myself in things that could weaken my hold. This is why I hold on tight to goodness and kindness. I have asked/told you about one too many things that do not relate to writing already, so let me not tell you about Harry Style’s Treat People With Kindness. 

It is okay to want to blood eagle a President, man. A land governed by unkindness reaps no kindness. A land governed by bloodshed sheds blood (Terrence Hayes). But what is the point if the wheel continues like this? In the end, I would like to believe that everyone will get what is coming for them. 

On capturing the flaws of your character as humanly as possible, let me share a line from one of the poems in a poetry collection I am working on: “Enough about the men who walk the lonely road. Enough/ About the men dumped like a bouquet of tulips after/ It has served its purpose of penitence & other telepathies./ Take me back to the origin. Because a shell is also a nest,/ & a nest is also a hiding place, return me to the meadow…”

The idea behind that poem is to return to the “man who sold the world.” That man who began the thing that asks every man to run from feeling—the act of vulnerability. The world has made us aware that nothing good has come out of men who hone silence, and just like the character who commits depraved things, everything has a beginning. A point of baby-like innocence. The way I capture the humanity of every awful character I write is to look for that point in their life, and to find out what created the ripple. What drives the animal? Even an animal without a heart will have to be sustained one way or another. When I know this, I want to take it from them. How would they react to this? Feel another’s pain. 

You know, you have added something to my arsenal by sharing that Louise Glück poem with me (I have not managed to get out of Averno and The Wild Iris). In my own mind, I’m invisible. I do not walk unless I need to. My writing has not needed that. I am a cart of ideas. I can’t say if they are crazy or not. And oh, you are not the only one who finds it hard memorising or reciting poems. I haven’t found a reason to go beyond a line that grounds me, and sometimes it’s even from prose. Like those sentences from Stephen Embleton’s Soyinka’s Memory: “Words are hard. Words break. Memory is a burden.”

Akal: You mentioned Terrence Hayes, and I had to go back and read some of his poetry. You ever ‘get’ poetry, Chris? I’ll tell you why I ask this. My introduction to Terrence Hayes was through his poem, American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin. I remember it was for a class by Dami Ajayi. I didn’t get what the entire poem was about until I read a summary of the poem. I endear myself as a poet in spaces with no poets, and this is fully because I still haven’t mastered poetry. Serious poets will talk of how spiritual it is and, at the same time economical. I am not in that zone yet. “You were always poetic, but you weren’t quite a poet,” Kei Miller writes this in a letter to James Baldwin. This sentence bothers me whenever I read poetry from prose writers. What distinguishes you as a poet?

Also, when were you going to tell me that you have a poetry collection coming? You describe it as an act of vulnerability, could you say more about the exposure of vulnerability? Tease us on what we should expect. I also know that you are doing some work for young Ghanaian writers. Could you say more on this as well?

I Echo: I am a young poet, Akal. I am burdened by a lack of knowledge about the arts. However, this burden is not enough for me to surrender to being tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. I had to google Kei Miller just now to read the letter you spoke of, and I understand how he could say that. However, I would like to think that after reading Miller’s letter, James Baldwin would’ve smiled and gone on to publish another poetry collection exactly how James Baldwin wants to write poetry. Not because he believes himself “quite a poet,” but because he believes what he wants to say and how he wants to say it matters—to him or someone else if grace allows it. 

I am currently swallowing Ishion Hutchinson’s School of Instructions and vomiting a review of it. After the first, probably, five pages, I didn’t get the poems. But then, I got to a part where it spoke of a Zion-haired boy. This made it interesting for me because I began to see that it is about a Jamaican boy. Nate Marshall, in The Valley of Making, wrote, our people deserve their own poetry written in their own language, their own jagged rhythm, their own style (paraphrased). While he had meant those words for Black Americans, I cannot entirely explain how much reading that collection of his, FINNA, changed my perspective on writing poetry. But, if you compare some of my work, you may notice the change in style I am moving towards. Do forgive me when I say I have not yet embodied this “spirituality” of poetry you speak of. I cannot tell you simply what distinguishes me as a poet. Maybe this is because, as I said, I am a young poet who is still growing my art. But I can tell you that I want my poems to be accessible enough so if I read them to my son, he will get them.

My son is like my poetry collection. It is in me. I have a plan for it, but I do not know when/if it’ll come out. All I have is hope. A hope that I will have the courage to walk into the grace needed to publish a poetry collection. I tell myself that this collection has to be as good as Ethelbert E. Miller’s Black Men Are Precious. If it isn’t, then, any other collection I write will have to follow the chase. The beginning and end of the vulnerability in the writing does not leave the page. And even if it did, and I bleed beyond necessary, I’ll probably carry the look of Richard Siken’s Crush cover. How I love that cover!

You said I was doing some work for young Ghanaian writers. Man, I am not doing anything for young Ghanaian writers. For now, I am trying to be a compass—someone that guides young writers like myself into what writing can offer them. I have some plans for the future, but for now, I am not doing enough. There is this Nigerian writer I would like to emulate the impact he has had on young poets (in Nigeria) some day, Pamilerin Jacob. I am presently too antisocial to connect with him. Maybe someday, if our paths cross, I will.

I just caught another thought about your “get” poetry. Don’t you think a poem is like love? That it will open up to the right person at the right time? When I read Dami Ajayi’s Affection and Other Accidents, it was instantly my favourite collection in that period of my life.

Akal: It should be cheers to us, the young poets and writers, who know very little about poetry and writing but keep returning to the blank page to try to write. We mess it up, get rejections, and grieve, but rise again to write more and more. I envy your hope, Chris. My optimism has never been as bold. I really need to work on this. Share some tips on how to foster hope.  I can’t wait to read your poetry collection.

I am done reading this poem by Ethelbert E. Miller and its closing line is how I want to bid you farewell. Black hands closing with so much love still left to give. It’s been an honour chatting with you. Our hands close/ love remains/ and we walk away, ready to spread it/ isn’t love the greatest light we carry? 

The next time we talk, I will surely start us with this contended question: which Jollof is better––Ghanaian or Nigerian?

I Echo : I have to tell you, I almost said no to this interview. I do not like to draw attention to myself. Now that we have opened the house, let me tell you that I am a very playful person—too playful most times, but I have never been playful enough to have a conversation about “which Jollof is better.” Conversations like these bore me.

For joy, I began making a compilation of some poems that have stood out to me. One of them is Ernest Ògúnyemí’s Hoist (Oh, how I wished you’d asked a question that made me think straight away about any of Samuel A. Adeyemi’s poems). In Hoist, Ògúnyemí writes: “In my life there are many silences— / I make bread of them.” The silences of my life are so tethered to hope, so much so that, if I let go of hope, forgive me for saying this, but, my life becomes forfeit. So, I guess this hope hops into every other aspect of my being. The tips you seek for optimism, I cannot give you. Maybe like salvation, you have to work out your own hope with fear and trembling.

I am in a trotro right now. Heading to the market with my sister. That Ethelbert E. Miller’s poem you shared, even reading it now, I can hear Miller’s voice. I can think of some poems in his collection, How We Sleep At Nights We Don’t Make Love. I love love love. If I begin to talk about love, I may not want to get down from the trotro, because if I alight, the sun is a fire I’d have to stand under for a good time. Let’s talk about love when we meet, should we? I’d like to witness how you love your woman. 

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AKAL is a Kenyan short story writer, essayist and poet. He has previously been shortlisted for the Africa Writers’ Award in poetry. Akal is also a 2023 Idembeka Creative Writing fellow and Ibua Novel Manuscript workshop attendee. In 2022, he was a recipient of two digital residencies organised by the University of East Anglia, one of which resulted in a short story collection that he contributed to. Akal reads in trust and writes in faith.

I ECHO is the pen name of Ghanaian-Nigerian writer Chris Baah who writes predominantly from Accra, Ghana. His works mostly revolve around masculinity, love, and connections. Dreaming of exploring the world, new cultures and new conversations, he hopes he can save the world by saving himself. He’s on X as @AyeEcho