Tanya Batson-Savage, Freelance Writer
Poet and songwriter Nikki Johnson. - CONTRIBUTED
APPROXIMATELY FIFTEEN years ago, while on maternity leave due to pregnancy with her only child, Nikki Johnson gave birth to triplets: her daughter, poetry and song writing. Though her poetry bears no traces of it, the title of her chapbook, Weights and Measures, hints at Johnson's life with the sciences.
Weights and Measures was published by the Calabash International Literary Trust Fund in the Calabash Chapbook Series. Like many writers, Johnson has found the pen to be the release valve for her life and so has balanced it with the day job. The book presents some of those pieces which have been the counter-measure to her everyday world.
Currently, that day job has Johnson as the executive assistant to the senior vice-president of corporate service at the University of Technology. However, before this current stint, with a Bachelor of Science (from the University of the West Indies) in biochemistry and a master's in Forensic Chemistry (from the University of Strattclyde, Scotland) she spent ten years working in forensics.
PART-TIME POET
As such, her work with poetry has never been full-time, and occasions when she can concentrate on just writing are rare. But though the wish for greater stretches of time to dedicate to the joys of poetry come out, Johnson explains that regret does not quite describe how she feels about not having the time. "The experiences I've had in my life have been the seeds for my poetry," she says.
Along with her songs and poetry, Johnson is now experimenting with creating a musical which she says came out of some music she has written, and admits she is more comfortable calling herself a lyricist than a poet.
Johnson's poems feel very personal and are filled with naturalistic imageries that blossom in the imagination. They reflect Johnson's passion for nature and she explains that she once described her dream house as a space where nature came inside.
'ANTHONY' POEMS
Several of the pieces in Weights and Measures are her 'Anthony' poems. Most of these pieces are merely numbered, and Johnson explains that there have been many 'Anthony' poems, some of which have fallen by the wayside, found unfit for public consumption. However, she is quite fond of pieces like Ocean Story and explains that though it had originally been omitted from the collection, she asked series editor Kwame Dawes to include it.
Anthony, however, is not some lover for whom Johnson pines. It is her reader and she explains that as such, Anthony is allowed to evolve as the reader evolves and sees him differently when they revisit the poem. Calling on her Ba'hai faith, she explains that to her Anthony is "the unseen you".
"For me (poetry's) been a release from my everyday life," she says, "the life of my imagination." So, she creates work largely from inspiration, and admits that as her pieces are usually allowed to germinate in her mind for some time, and as they are often quite short, she can go around with the entire piece in her head for days before writing it down. She also explains that the release comes from the creation, not the writing.
"For the personal therapy of it, I do not have to write it down but there is this conceit that writing it down and publishing it will help other people," she says with a smile.
