Theresa Lola: Poetry can transport you to places you’ve never been in ten lines. It’s emotion compressed
- Charlotte Owen-Burge
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
Theresa Lola is a Nigerian British poet, former Young People’s Laureate for London, whose work is now studied on the GCSE syllabus. Born in Lagos and raised in London, she first gained attention with In Search of Equilibrium, a debut collection exploring grief, ritual and mental health. Her latest, Ceremony for the Nameless, turns to names – what they reveal, what they hide, and how they shape identity. Drawing on Yoruba traditions, personal history and oral storytelling, Lola traces the ways people adapt to survive, from anglicising names to curating how they’re seen.
Praised by Bernardine Evaristo for its “emotional urgency and imaginative force,” the book has marked Lola as one of the most original poets of her generation. In this conversation, she reflects on poetry as a way to reclaim language, connect with heritage, and ask questions that don’t need neat answers.
Before poetry, I was writing short stories, because of my love for reading books, which my mother introduced me to. But everything changed when I went to a poetry festival in secondary school. It was the Lagos Poetry Festival. At the time, I’d never left the country, let alone travelled it, and a poet read a poem set on a plane. It was about a tragedy that happened in Nigeria, and I felt like I was transported to the world of that event.
I wanted to be able to do that to others; to transport people into places they’d never been, without needing a whole novel. Poetry could do it in ten lines, fourteen lines. It was emotion compressed. And I just thought, wow.
Poetry became the way I could document experience, even though I now think ‘documenting’ might not be the right word. I think I’m an archivist in some way. I'm very aware of my background as British Nigerian, and what I’m drawn to is bringing my stories into poetry in a natural way. But I also want to take advantage of what poetry can do; things prose or novels can’t.
Poetry does not have to make sense. If I just wanted to tell my story, I could use any other art form. But with poetry, sound becomes meaning. The rhythm becomes its own language, even for someone who doesn’t understand the words. There’s no obligation for linear narrative; no need to bring resolution. That’s what I love – letting poetry be all it can be, and telling my story through that.
Poetry is like a house where everything can be a door.
I try not to think too much about who I’m writing for. What matters to me is knowing why I’m writing. Who I’m writing for naturally comes into it. But the writers I looked up to when I started were from everywhere: Kenya, Canada, America, Nigeria. Writers from all over the world gave me so much, so it would feel selfish to write for only one group. Poetry is like a house where everything can be a door. People enter in ways I don’t expect. At readings, people take things from my poems that I never intended. And that’s the power and beauty of it.
When I was working on Ceremony for the Nameless, I had originally been writing a totally different manuscript that just wasn’t working. But there was one poem I loved called My Name is My Home. I knew I wanted to write a collection rooted in my culture. But I don’t speak my language. So I was thinking: what other ways can I reconnect? What other ways can I stay connected?
I started researching oral history, oral traditions. I looked up Yoruba proverbs. One of the proverbs I came across translated to: “You do not name a child unless you know the condition of the home into which they are born.” That hit me so hard. Because when I relocated to the UK, I was using my Yoruba name. But I ended up switching to Theresa. When you come to a new place with an accent, and there are fifteen-year-old boys who find your name unfamiliar, the only way they know how to respond is by chewing it up and spitting it out. That’s what they did to my name.
At university, I started using Lola. I wanted an artist’s name. But really, I was masking my identity. I was studying Accounting and Finance and didn’t want potential employers to find my poems online, because at the time my poems were quite charged. That proverb made me reflect on my relationship with names; how I’d used them as camouflage, and how they’d shaped and informed my identity without me realising it.
Names in Yoruba culture are deeply intentional. They’re spiritual, prophetic, a portal to tell the story of where you’ve come from and where you’re going. But I think that’s true beyond Yoruba tradition. Across time, names have been used to capture existence, name-calling, racial naming, cultural naming, pet names. We name things we don’t understand. A condition, a disease, a new plant, we give it a name to control it. Man can’t let things just exist. We get restless. Naming is how we try to make sense of things.
Even with colours. Writing the book, I discovered some languages don’t have words for certain colours. Those colours didn’t exist to them so they made up names. There’s always going to be something we can’t name. But the naming is still our first act of possession.
Every decision we make – even something as small as which name we use – is a way to shape how we want to be seen, and who we want to be.
Writing the collection gave me peace. There are decisions you make in life that you don’t understand at the time. This was a process of introspection and retrospection. I discovered things I hadn’t known about myself. For example, oríkì – a type of name in Yoruba culture, like a praise name. I didn’t think I had one, but I found out I’d known my oríkì all along. My grandma says it to me every time I call her. I just didn’t know that’s what it was. Through writing the book, researching, speaking to my mum, I discovered that other name; that other part of myself.
It also made me realise something else, we’re always curating ourselves. Not just on social media. Every decision we make – even something as small as which name we use – is a way to shape how we want to be seen, and who we want to be. We’re always making decisions that take us further from our pain.
This is my second book. And as a writer, you start to notice patterns. What you’re drawn to, even when you try to write something else. You start to see your urges, your safe spaces. For me, music came back again and again. Writing about the collective, about belonging, about trying to find yourself in unfamiliar spaces. I also started seeing my crutches – the words I fall back on when I don’t know how to end a poem. So writing Ceremony for the Nameless was also a way of pushing myself out of those habits.
The world is chaotic. Poetry absorbs that chaos. It doesn’t demand structure. It can be staccato, pithy, offbeat, and that in itself is a form of truth. Poetry also stands apart because it is aware that it’s using language. And language, in the world we’re in, is being used and abused. It has become a weapon. Poets try to use it differently. We try to show that language can still be honourable, and truthful. Yes, we might not be the perfect vessels. We are unreliable narrators. But we come to the poem humbly. We’re trying to heal, not harm.
Poetry has become a kind of modern-day proverb. People still use traditional proverbs – but these days, it’s often a line from a poem that gets quoted. I don’t set out to write moral lessons. But like a proverb, poetry uses figurative language to transmit something bigger. I never know what the lesson is when I’m writing, but I try to leave some sort of hope. That’s the best I can give.
People sometimes ask if I’m a page poet or a performance poet. But poetry started as an oral tradition. When you look at the Greek poets, it was theatrical, performative, communal. Somewhere along the way, poetry became something private, insular. But I don’t think you need to choose. I love the process of giving a poem a voice on the page, and then a new voice on the stage.
When I perform, I do call and response. I ask questions. I share stories behind the poems. I make it an experience. That’s what poetry was always supposed to be.
This conversation took place on 31 May 2025 and has been edited and condensed for clarity and flow.
Theresa Lola’s second collection, Ceremony for the Nameless, is available in paperback and ebook.
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