Peace Akinwale and I graduated from the same university, the University of Ilorin. He was among the few creatives on campus who fuelled my passion for creative writing. His poems appeared in reputable magazines like Agbowo, Barren Magazine, and New World Writing. His pen name, Phillip Peace, nudged a reaction wherever it was mentioned on campus, especially in creative circles. In his poems, he explored love, loss, and otherness. His poem won a Student Union Writing Prize, which was the most prized literary accolade in our university. So, I envisaged a poetry future, where his poems would have been published in several reputable journals and won even more prizes.
Then the pandemic happened. Our school also went on strike. A lot of us thought school would reopen in no time, so we waited on life. Some others decided to take charge of their careers and kick off, whether in their already chosen paths or in a new path they forged for themselves. I remember a friend calling me during the pandemic to inform me they’d finally found their purpose, and they’ve been doing what they found ever since.
Because I used to believe poetry – or creative writing generally – is a thing of passion, I still pictured a future of poetry for Peace. That no matter what, it will always have your attention. I asked him recently why I haven’t been seeing his poetry works and he said he stopped writing poetry.
Peace Akinwale is now a B2B content marketer who writes product-led content for SaaS companies and marketing agencies. His in-depth keyword research and strategic content planning skills have helped his clients save thousands of dollars in Google ads costs and increase organic traffic, sign-ups, and actual sales. While there are other writers who have dropped poetry for other passions, there’s something spectacularly different about Peace that hoisted me to have a conversation with him. My intention is to help anyone out there who is struggling with clarity.
Hey Peace, how do you do?
Hey Ahmad. I’m quite alright. How are you?
I’m okay and well. Let’s start here. How long did it take you to get into content marketing?
Ah, bro. This is acquired knowledge over like 6 or 7 years. I didn’t start learning these things when I started writing, but everything adds up. Even though I didn’t know content strategy, topic cluster or pillar content when I started writing, the things I wrote, read, learned, heard and researched aided content marketing.
When you said writing, does it include poetry?
Yes. I believe that everything you do/learn plays a role in what you become.
So did it occur to you previously that you’d stop writing poetry someday?
Dropping poetry wasn’t a conscious effort. 2019/2020, I was still writing poetry. But 2020 was when I took content writing seriously because I realised that, this is lockdown, there’s no money coming in and I had to survive. During that time, I already took over my finances and I was teaching in schools to make money. But lockdown came, schools were closed and the jobs were gone. I had to start writing for money. I was still doing poetry, but when I realised that “content writing” required time and effort to help put food on my table, I had to choose. Poetry requires similar, if not more, dedication. The truth is that you can’t scale up in poetry if you don’t read good poetry and great stories from journals and books. But I didn’t have money to buy those books.
What was poetry for you?
Poetry was my truest voice. It was a way to say things I wouldn’t normally say. I started writing in 2014/15. I was a very English person from childhood because out of my siblings, I was the only one who read every newspaper my dad got on Sundays. My friend, Godwin Oluponmile, was writing poetry and I asked him to teach me. He added me to a WhatsApp group and from there, I used my knowledge as an Arts student to write poetry. Writing poetry was an open door of expression, to say things I’ve learnt and internalised growing up; things I knew how to communicate through words that I couldn’t sit down with someone and express. But poetry wasn’t paying as I would have wanted.
So you dropped it
It is the reality of the fact that I needed real money to survive. Anyone would argue that there’s potential money in poetry, but the truth is that before I got to that point where I’d make money in poetry, I would have invested a lot of money; buy books and travel to events. Where would I see the money? It wasn’t like a straight transition per se, and I realised that poetry is a long-term thing, but I needed money.
But you also needed money to learn content marketing
Not as much at all. All I needed was mobile data. I started everything from my phone.
Where were you at this time?
I was still in Ilorin. I used to write in my bio that I write from a small room in Ilorin.
When exactly did you stop writing poetry?
When I got into writing other stuff, writing poetry slipped out. But whatever you’re doing that pays the bills, you have to put 100% of your time into it to get better at it and make more money from it. At that time, poetry was not paying the bills; it was collecting the bill.
Did you make any money from poetry?
I don’t think I made any money. But I remember getting $50 from a journal for an essay I wrote.
How did you get into content writing/marketing?
My friend, Funmilayo Obasa, reached out to me and said she had a friend who wanted to hire content writers. I said, ah, let me write now. That was how I started. It’s COVID, lockdown. I was depressed; not depressed in a higher sense but I was reading a lot, writing a lot and nothing else. I was spending the money I had saved and nothing else was coming. I didn’t even know it’d lead to dropping poetry but it was just something I started and liked.
How much were you making then?
At the time, I was getting stupid pay like 1.30 naira per word. When I wrote 500 words, that’s like 600 naira. And most of them were bound to 500 words. So I had to write a lot to pay my 60k rent and upkeep. It wasn’t like there was a serious lack. My parents were civil servants. My father likes farming, so we went to the farm a lot, even after he started his private school in 2015. Some people see me today as butty but dem no know say I’ve been to the farm a lot. Food was not like a real core problem but that was the time I knew the value of money and that it could do things for you.
Do you sometimes miss poetry?
I love the camaraderie that comes with publishing poems and having poet friends but I don comot poetry from my mind. The thing is, you can’t be good at any writing without creativity and working hard. Content writing and marketing requires effort and work and research, like poetry. But unlike poetry, I could get the money sooner.
What about the passion for poetry?
Nah. For me, it’s easy to drop any passion that doesn’t pay to sustain the passion. When you’re not entirely responsible for your finances, it’s easy to follow your passion. But in the end, we are all looking for money. I let go of poetry because I needed to feed something that could potentially liberate me financially, and at that time, it was not poetry. I also needed to dedicate time to it.
Do you still write poetry or will write poetry again?
Frankly speaking, I don’t think I can still write poetry. I need to read good stuff to write good stuff. I have a lot of poems and essays bookmarked, but there is no time to consume them. I read a lot, but it’s strictly because I need to stay up to date in the industry I work in.
How financially independent are you now?
I wouldn’t put a price on it because this freelancing business is unsteady. Some months you are up, some months, it sucks. In Nigeria’s scheme of things, I’d say I am very very convenient.
How convenient?
I earn about 1,500 – 2,000 USD monthly. But, as I said, the freelancing business is unsteady; some months it’s crickets.
Any final words?
I feel there will probably be a point in my life in the future where I will be comfortable enough to read and write poetry again. Or at least sponsor something in poetry. Also, for me, I believe it is easy to drop any passion that doesn’t pay enough to sustain that passion. If the passion is not big enough to feed you, you have to leave it at some point because you have to survive.
