Tiya Kunaiyi-Akpanah, Poet, Author and Web Technician Coordinator
A multiracial baby- Tiya Kunaiyi was born March 21, 1980 in Kalamazoo, MI to a Nigerian man and his Chicana wife. Her father, in the United Stated on an educational visa, returned to Nigeria shortly after she was born to prepare a comfortable life for his new family. At the rambunctious age of 5, her parents decided that it was time to make the permanent move to Nigeria.
The majority of her tomboyish childhood was spent in Port Harcourt, an industrious city in River state. A combination of poor Nigerian broadcasting, a limited video library and unreliable electricity made a wild imagination a necessity. When she wasn’t out climbing trees, making mud pies or raising stray litters of kittens- she was expressing herself creatively. Coloring, painting, drawing and reading seemed to be the only things available to occupy her young mind. She buried herself in the hundreds of books her parents bought her and sometimes, even indulged in some that they didn’t mean for her to read.
Contrary to the portrayals of African life on American television, life in Nigeria wasn’t all savage- at least not in the primitive sense. There were no mud hut or wild animals running about – at least none that weren’t behind metal bars or kept as pets. What was there, was seriously corrupt undertones that ran ramped through the, then, military government. Consequently, a streak of victimization ran right across social classes of the Nigerian population. For the 10 years Tiya spent in Nigeria, there was only one president, backed by a crooked army. Greed caused the divide between the poor and rich to widen with each passing year; political tension continuously mounted and violence became a regular phenomenon throughout most major Nigerian cities.
By the time she was 15, Tiya had owned a monkey, traveled to many exotic lands, and met a plethora of ethnically enriched people. Her childhood knew the thrill of motorboat rides to the native village, the glamour of wearing heavy coral beads and expensive wrappers while dancing under an African sky. It also knew the darker side of life- she had seen the dead body of a young homeless child left out on the street corner for weeks. She felt the blinding sting of tear gas as she ran through a riot-torn neighborhood full of burning buildings and over-turned cars. There were long periods of no flowing water and working electricity. The stress of the extreme conditions of Nigerian life, constant mosquitoes bites and longing to see family back in States began to take their toll on her mother’s deteriorating health. In the summer of 1994, Tiya and her mother returned to the States to vacation and give her mother a chance to regain her health. Her parents had always planned to send Tiya back to the States to attend college, just like they both had done. Her mother decided it was in her daughter’s best interest to finish the last two years of high school in the States to give Tiya time to assimilate to the U.S. education system.
All through high school, Tiya’s natural interest in creative writing began getting positive reinforcement. English teacher after English teacher complimented her on the imaginative story telling and an expansive vocabulary, encouraging her to develop her gift. After graduating in 1997, Tiya made her way to Michigan State University in Lansing, MI to pursue a degree in Communications. By this time, Tiya had begun seriously writing poetry, keeping a book that she shared with friends and family on occasion. She heard that there was a small group that was throwing open mic nights at a small café near campus. Very little information was readily available, at the time, about the group and out of curiosity; she made her way to a few of the open mics. By the near end of the semester she had fallen in love with tight knit group known as The Black Poet Society.
The Black Poet Society became the love of her college life. Initially, it was made up of six dedicated members (including her) who carried the later success of the group on their backs. At the time she joined, the urban trends where beginning to ride on the wave of a new phenomenon called Neo-soul. The Neo-soul wave, close cousins to the poetry scene, created a perfect backdrop for the Black poets vision to explode and through dedication and sheer love of the art, they propelled themselves into local popularity, creating an eclectic outlet for the MSU community. The movement was getting on its feet and the Society’s signature open mic performance, the Soul Nite, heavily depended upon the members’ ability to deliver consistent poetic excellence. Members were required to have a minimum of three poems and stage pizzazz ready to go at all times which was initially problematic for Tiya, who suffered terrible stage fright. But passion conquered fear and by college graduation, Tiya had mastered the mic enough to begin fine-tuning her poetic voice.
During her time spent performing she had plenty of opportunity for growth, performing with some of the movers and shakers of the poetic world. Sugar Johnson, Kamilah Hassan, Nikki Giovanni, and The Last Poets- all great forces that Tiya was afforded the opportunity to stand on the same stage with, through college. In 2003, Tiya met an up and coming entertainer by the name of Ed Garnes. Garnes was a graduate student at MSU, who had come from a very entertainment enriched background in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. He had his feet firmly planted in the arts and was making a name for himself as an events organizer and notable writer on the Atlanta scene. After hearing some pieces from Tiya’s collection, he began insisting that she seriously think about writing a book. His encouragement began changing the direction of Tiya’s writing morphing it from just a side hobby to a self-defining reality- writing became part of her definition and not just a feature. She committed herself to the idea of publishing her work and in the summer of 2004, Tiya began compiling her works together in the effort to write her first book, Complicated Simplicity.
Writing the book didn’t come as easy as she had initially anticipated. Things had changed- Tiya had changed. Her voice- matured, no longer content with writing poems about butterflies and cute quips and crushes. Her family, by this time, was in disarray- Time and human fault had taken its toll on everyone. Memories of the life she’d left behind, the good and the bad, began flooding back to her. She discovered herself a distant stranger from the careless innocence that her past poetic work reflected. She decided to turn to a close friend and fellow alumni of the Black Poets, Tommy Blount, for creative guidance. To pay the bills she took a temporary job at a construction association as an administrative assistant. She had it all planned out, figuring she’d work for a year, save up some money, finish her book and be off to Atlanta to begin living off her art. Life is rarely that simple and the harsh reality of life hit fast. Financially on her own, schools loans and basic life necessities gobbled up her money, the book was advancing at a slow pace and printing expenses were baffling. Tiya found herself struggling more emotionally, financially and artistically than she ever did in college. The only mental solace she found was in the few and scattered open mics she could find around town. Edit after edit still left her feeling displaced from her artistic vision and more strangled by the stresses of corporate everydays but she continued taking steps forward, some blind, but steps none the less. Most evening was spent at home, editing piece after piece trying to bring out the truth in it. Finally in the summer of 2004, after repeated requests from people who were familiar with her work, she released her first chapbook, A Canvas Called Limitless.
After a brief stint as a spoken word feature with a local band, Tiya met a woman by the name of Rina Risper, Editor in Chief of the New Citizens Press Newspaper (TNCP). Risper was a big name in the community, her newspaper sponsoring various events around town- some exclusive to the TNCP, some in conjunction with other organizers around the city of Lansing. Rina had created a new poetic movement, The Nu Poets, a spin off of her newspaper. Shortly after meeting her, Rina invited Tiya to be one of the permanent members of her poetic movement to which Tiya happily agreed. In the winter of 2004, Tiya finally reached that unattained point she feared would never come and finished Complicated Simplicity. Presently, she is regularly performing The Nu Poets family and the group is gaining recognition in the artistic community. Still with the construction association, she was recently promoted to Web-Tech Coordinator, designing and managing the Website and technical affairs of the business. Everything has come full circle, she having found a way to overlap reality with her dreams. She has gain irreplaceable knowledge on layouts and publishing through her position that she is able to now apply to the completion of her book.
