Chika Jones

2 hours ago

5 min read

Performance Poetry, African Oral Traditions, and Finding a Voice in Medway.

TENS-2026-003 | 10 Black Voices of Medway 2026

Chika Jones - Nucleus Arts Centre, Chatham - Michi Masumi: 2026

Chika Jones describes poetry as a practice. Writing, performing, sharing and organising opportunities for others all belong within that description.

In his conversation with me for TENS, he reflects on reading, Nigerian cultural inheritance and the creative spaces he helps build in Medway.

His account follows a voice across different settings without presenting artistic development as a straightforward progression.

Books, friendships, performance and changing surroundings each influence what he writes and how he wants that writing to meet an audience.

Beginning with reading

Chika remembers growing up in a household where his father liked books. His early reading included fiction, and poetry first reached him within the pages of other writing. A poem encountered in a novel could interrupt the surrounding story and leave a lasting impression. That experience helped him recognise the force of language arranged and spoken in a different way.

He later watched poetry performances online, including material associated with Def Jam Poetry. Seeing writers perform opened another route into the form. Interest became something he could share with friends, and university offered opportunities to look for places where he might perform himself.

This account gives reading and watching their proper place within creative work. Before there is a finished performance, there may be years of curiosity, imitation, discovery and conversation. Chika's story also shows how different media connect. A poem printed inside a novel, a video watched online and a live event can all become part of the same developing practice.

Between the page and the stage

When asked about the difference between spoken word and performance poetry, Chika explains why terminology matters to him. He associates page poetry primarily with writing intended for books and spoken word with writing shaped for performance. His own preference is for work that can move between the page and the stage.

The distinction is about intention rather than a ranking of value. He does not suggest that one form is inherently better. Instead, he considers how the setting affects the writing itself: how a line reads, how it sounds and what changes when a person carries it into a room.

Michi describes the theatrical qualities she has noticed in his performances, including storytelling and engagement with an audience. Chika receives that observation as another perspective on his work. Their exchange is valuable because it records artistic practice being discussed, rather than simply assigning a label to a finished product.

Language carries inheritance.

The interview summary connects Chika's approach to his upbringing in Lagos and to African oral traditions, including Yoruba praise singing and Igbo forms of speech.

These connections help explain why performance cannot be separated entirely from cultural inheritance. A way of addressing people, holding attention or shaping a story may travel with a speaker across places.

Living in England does not require him to erase those influences. They remain part of the resources available to his work, alongside the books and writers he encounters in other settings.

His story makes room for several influences to coexist without demanding that one become the single explanation for his voice.

Among the writers discussed in his summary are Chinua Achebe, Teju Cole and Andrea Gibson. He also mentions reading Moby Dick. The range matters because it resists a narrow expectation about what a Nigerian poet should read or produce. Cultural identity can inform a practice without restricting its curiosity.

Subjects that change with experience

Chika reflects on differences between earlier writing and his more recent interests. His summary describes earlier work addressing gender-based violence, police brutality and corruption, while more recent poetry includes nature and the seasons. Changes in surroundings and attention become changes in subject matter.

That movement does not mean the earlier concerns cease to matter. It shows an artist whose work develops with experience. Readers encountering only a single performance might assume its themes explain everything about the writer. Oral history offers a longer view, allowing a person to describe how interests shift and how different periods of work relate to one another.

The interview also records the practical importance of opportunity. Chika recalls winning a poetry slam in Nigeria and using the prize money to obtain his first laptop. Recognition had a material consequence: it helped provide a tool for further work. Such details connect artistic ambition with the resources needed to continue practising.

Making room for other voices

His involvement in Medway Poetry extends the conversation beyond his own performances. The initiative, described in the summary as beginning around 2023, creates space for local poets to share their work. For a practice that depends on encounter, having somewhere to perform is part of the cultural infrastructure.

Chika also discusses plans associated with a Sustainable Arts Collective, including Nigerian theatre and publishing opportunities for a wider range of writers. These are presented as developing ideas within his account, rather than as proof that every proposed activity has already happened.

Alongside poetry, he describes working with language and writing in technology, including concerns about online abuse and community safety. This broadens the picture of a creative practitioner. The skills involved in understanding language can have several applications, and paid work and artistic work may exist together.

Within TENS, Chika's contribution preserves the thought behind a contemporary creative life in Medway. It documents reading, cultural memory, the choices that shape performance and the effort involved in opening a platform to others. His voice invites readers to encounter poetry as an ongoing relationship between language, place and the people who listen.

For a local library collection, preserving this discussion in the speaker’s words adds something different from retaining a programme or recording a performance alone. Chika explains what he means by practice and how he thinks about the relationship between writing and delivery. Future readers can encounter the decisions around a poem as well as its eventual presentation.

That distinction makes the interview useful to people interested in local creative history and also to younger writers wondering how an artistic life develops. It records questions still being explored, leaving room for later work to change the answers rather than treating an interview as the final statement of an artist's identity.

About this collection

An edited account based on the supplied oral-history transcript extract and interview summary. Personal recollections are attributed to the narrator; this article is not a verbatim transcript.

Supported by the Medway Heritage Place Project, with funding from Medway Council and the National Lottery Heritage Fund. With thanks to National Lottery players.

Interview, editorial adaptation and project direction by Michi Masumi — Anthropology, Art & AI. Published through the Benjamin Zephaniah Digital Archives & Library, an initiative led by Michi Masumi. Portrait photography by Michi Masumi unless otherwise credited; Leslie Haynes family photographs supplied through Russell Haynes, with original photographers credited where known.