Wole Soyinka says

First of all I believe implicitly that any work of art which opens out the horizons of the human mind, the human intellect is by its very nature a force for change, a medium for change. In the black community here, theater can be used and has been used as a form of purgation, it has been used cathartically; it has been used to make the black man in this society work out his historical experience and literally purge himself at the altar of self-realization. This is one use to which it can be put. The other use, the other revolutionary use, may be far less overt, far less didactic, and less self-conscious. It has to do very simply with opening up the sensibilities of the black man not merely towards very profound and fundamental truths of his origin that are in Africa in suddenly opening him...to new experiences...as a means of making the audience question an identity which was taken for so long for granted, suddenly opening the audience up to a new existence, a new scale of values, a new self-submission, a communal rapport. By making the audience or a member of the audience go through this process, a reawakening has begun in the individual which in turn affects his attitude to the external social realities. This for me is a revolutionary purpose...Finally and most importantly, theater is revolutionary when it awakens the individual in the audience, in the black community in this case, who for so long has tended to express his frustrated creativity in certain self-destructive ways, when it opens up to him the very possibility of participating creatively himself in this larger communal process. In other words, and this has been proven time and time again, new people who never believed that they even possessed the gift of self expression become creative and this in turn activates other energies within the individual. I believe the creative process is the most energizing. And that is why it is so intimately related to the process of revolution within society....

There are different kinds of artists and very often, I'll be very frank with you, I wish I were a different kind. I mean all of them are quite valuable. I have always rejected any special responsibility for the artist. I've never belonged in that school and I feel like striking those who insist that artists should have a particular burden. No, I don't accept it. What we should recognize is that some artists are temperamentally different from others. I mean, I'm a consumer of the artistic product and I do not want to read "engaged" literature all the time. My horizons on humanity are enlarged by reading the writers of poems, seeing a painting, listening to some music, some opera, which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being. And so the artists who are lucky to be temperamentally gifted that way should not be tempted to make propaganda of their lives. No. They should just create and thereby assist those of us who are unfortunate enough to constantly immerse ourselves in all this diversion. To at least enjoy a little bit of their essence, which for me is every bit as important as the work of the artist/activist. For me there is no distinction, but sometimes I wish I were the other kind of artist.... 

 

I was constantly surrounded, I recall, by aunts, uncles, my father's intellectual companions, all of them raconteurs of some sort or the other. They recounted episodes involving themselves, battles, conflicts. I grew up in an atmosphere where words were an integral part of culture...One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer. I'm not one of those writers I learned about who get up in the morning, put a piece of paper in their typewriter machine and start writing. That I've never understood. I can write days on end, not wanting to do anything else. And at other times gestate. I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper. ..(Of great importance is) allowing one's self to be overwhelmed by phenomena, by experience. In other words, the ability to submit one's ego, one's personal self-awareness, to the phenomena around one. Off-the-cuff, I would say this is one of the most profound prerequisites (to becoming a writer). But there are certain experiences which are concise, which are so miniaturized in their impact, that a poem becomes a logical mode of expression for it. And of course, certain polemical demands require the essay form....

I've read widely in the world's literature, European, Asiatic, American, there are Buddhist reference points and mythologies in my poetry too. In other words, I cannot cut off and will not attempt to cut off what is my experience and what is after all, the world's experience. There is a great deal of intercommunication in the world. A lot of people tend to forget that. As long as I find the means of expression, a form of communication which does not alienate my immediate readership and I do not deliberately cram my work with foreign references to a point where the work is indigestible -- these are faults which should never be permitted by any serious writer. I believe that in expanding the horizons and the curiosity also of my readership, I think I'm contributing to both their intellectual and general universal conceptualization even of their immediate experiences. The actual form, the medium, the metaphor, which one uses is ultimately unimportant because this is merely the framework upon which one poses certain themes. As I said as long as the actual metaphor itself does not become an obstacle to the appreciation of the entire message, I don't think a poet should worry unduly about the eclectic appearance or structure of his work. We must not think that traditionalism means raffia skirts; in other words it's no longer possible for a purist literature for the simple reason that even our most traditional literature has never been purist....