Named after the late Publisher of Nigerian NewsDirect, Dr Samuel Folorunsho Ibiyemi, the Folorunsho Editor’s Poetry Prize follows in the tradition of upholding and supporting poetry in Nigeria through our Poetry Column. This prize has been bumped up to N200,000 for 2024. ELIGIBILITY…
By Káyọ̀dé The foggy morning splitsmy lower lip, blistersthe flesh that refuses to submit to its whiteness. I slip outof the embrace of my mother’s Ankara—and no blanket warmth rivals its old snug fragrance.I am twenty rivers and hectaresof forests…
By Arikewusola Abdul Awal It begins with love: the flame of misery,wanting to be let loose from a kiss— brown eagerness mistakes a landmine foran orchard and runs into a dance of explosion. Somewhere, a life reachesIts climax in flames.…
By Fasasi Ridwan Unlike before, I have retired from walking the sorrow of my body.Stuck in my room, peering through the mist-white morning.The windowpane, awakened, opens its eyes to gray winged butterfliesproposing their love to the frenzies of flowers. If…
By Marvellous Mmesomachi Igwe Bone-white night. Dead world. All about me, a shimmering river of silver, knife-lit lake of quiet. I have opened my eyes into an inferno of colour. Caribbean sky. Broad leaves and their lemon gaze. Of the…
Poetry Column-NND, in partnership with Abuja International Poetry Festival 2024 (AIPFEST2024), is pleased to announce a call for submission of poems to be published in the Poetry Column of Nigerian NewsDirect on the theme: AFRO-FUTURISM. With globalisation and widespread technological…
By Aliyu Umar Muhammad The poem can start with him walking backwards into a roomHe takes off his jacket and sits down for the rest of his life— Warsan Shire Little thing,I know how deathgrows in you.I know how life…
By Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi The whole house, like a body, fenced hot with fleshed clothes that refuse to dry.This, itself, is war, the beginning of the end,the derivation of warmth—like the feeling after a burnraged by a fire of ourselves.…
By Isaiah Adepoju Every evening wind-intangible,feral shadows burst open the wallsof the city like hand ploughing dead grass.The hard, inarticulate things memory-familiar, loyal to a fault— prise the city’sboughs and sunders, its Recyclable God,beat against morning & the innocence of…
By Bright Kingsley To say that it falls—soft yellow & white dew, blue overlays of skyon our faces. Green tides, a rushing wind &itself drenched in the glee of a fading night To say that its floorswere covered in stars,…
