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Poetry Column
...Reflects on the place of human imagination in the age of AI Nigerian poet and novelist Godson Osarenren has shared insights from his participation in the Umurage International Book and Art Festival in Kigali, Rwanda, where he led a poetry masterclass, discussed artificial intelligence and reflected on the country’s history of genocide and subsequent reconstruction. ...
Poetry Column
By S. Abdulwasi’h Olaitan Lost and alone in exile, nursing your wounds.But because the pathways carved by the land that spat you out are nostalgic, your homeland is a hummingbird with an artificial voice. Her discordant melodies, on the taste buds of history, reeked of sins. The morning you took to your father's dusty Gángan to strike yourself ablaze, he ...
Poetry Column
By Paul Chibuike Emenike You'll wake to a smothering September,smeared with the indigoed footprints ofa ripening day.Rain crackling outside like applause,rain spacing between your static sentences & warped window. Our Father, who sleeps in heaven, thispresent tense is his last lifeboat,his most hallowed syntax, because a bird in hand is only real than two pigeons in a burning bush. ...
Literature & Arts
Poets, musicians, visual artists and cultural enthusiasts gathered in Lagos on September 19 for the September edition of the Monthly Poetic Rendezvous, which marked the International Day of Peace with performances and conversations on peaceful coexistence. The gathering, tagged “International Peace Day”, was held under the theme, “Invest in Peace for Everyone, Everywhere, Every Day”, ...
Poetry Column
By Alobu Emmanuel At least 50 people, mostly children, died after an overloaded boat capsized on Thursday 20th August in Nigeria's northwest Sokoto state. The accident took place near Gorau in Goronyo local government - Reuters It's Janazah, and the Imam is saying somethingabout the river gives and the river takes.And I know people of ...
Literature & Arts
By Ayokunle Samuel Betiku More than a century ago, William Henry Davies asked a question that has only grown more urgent with time: What is this life if, full of care, / We have no time to stand and stare. Davies' poem Leisure protests against the kind of world which values motion over noticing. It ...
Poetry Column
By Al Amin Muhammad Gloss black paints my body at the fissure of entering. My suffering is a scar birthed into a story. I tell God I swallow him so i could be called god by virtue of bearings in the loop of everything. Ameen said sometimes suffering is just suffering. I say likewise is pain. My ribs did not crack each morning with ...
Poetry Column
By Chisom Charles Nnanna We cannot tell the children that there is no hope — James Baldwin IA caveat: in these lines, a speeding bullet isn'ta prologue to oblivion, but the exact portrait of grit. Since I started poem-ing, I've been a paper planemistaking every wind for a direction.A familiar tongue once asked what I ...
Poetry Column
By Nket Awaji The metaphor embedded in JC Amaechi’s title is quite striking, especially in the way it hints at the social anxiety of the story: being black in a white-dominated society. The writer may be writing from within the line on this “white paper,” but the protagonist’s experience, as the story depicts, is lived ...
Poetry Column
Title: A Man’s LifeAuthor: Shogo Olalekan Uthman Extent: 54 pagesSize: 5.5 x 8.5Format: Paperback and eBookGenre: PoetryISBN: 978-978-62571-2-9Publication Date: July 2026Publisher: Noirledge PublishingReviewer: ’Joba Ojelabi In A Man’s Life, Shogo Olalekan Uthman explores the quiet bargains men make with masculinity, responsibility and vulnerability, asking what is lost when endurance becomes an expectation. Published in 2026 by ...
Poetry Column
By CP Nwankwo IV Enraged with the fetters was a pigeonhole dream associated with water: lame bodies, oars of a shipwreck passing through the graduations of night make for a long crossing. Blood on cuffs, ocean-wide, the subject of a New World is a wild storm, uttering lingo with the arrhythmia of raindrops. Don’t talk ...
Poetry Column
mother knows how to name pain, not in language, but in the way silence sticks to her after anima christi. she has a tongue made of incense and a heart that jingles crisply like the sanctus bell. once, she sketched on my chest, a tabernacle with graphite and fire. said, beginnings are like that: rituals, ...
Poetry Column
for ma.after Aracelis Girmay. By Dolapo Tajudeen You, resident of heaven watching over me, you are who I love. Lost tenant of the world, crossing the sirāt & trying to cross the sirāt, It is you I love. Oasis at my burnt parchings slaking my thirst, flooding my breasts. Defendant at the doorstep of my sins, bear- ing ...
Poetry Column
for ma. after Aracelis Girmay. You, resident of heaven watching over me, you are who I love. Lost tenant of the world, crossing the sirāt & trying to cross the sirāt, It is you I love. Oasis at my burnt parchings slaking my thirst, flooding my breasts. Defendant at the doorstep of my sins, bear- ...
Poetry Column
By Abdulbasit A. Olúwaníshọlá again, i am exiled from my body.i now wander like Àkúdàáyá. &whenever i try rites for ìràpadà, my body walls itself like a tortoise crawling its head back into its shell.it leaks the light to[u/r]ch of God, & fills the hollows with ashes. days haveashen & i am still nothing but ghost—a spirit ...
Poetry Column
Conversations around drug prevention assumed a powerful creative dimension as Naija Poetry Fest Community, in collaboration with Alliance Française Lagos, Mike Adenuga Centre and The Haiku Foundation, commemorated the 2026 International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking with an inspiring blend of poetry, performance, education and advocacy. Held on Saturday, 18 July 2026, at ...
Poetry Column
By Abdulmueed Balogun Adewale Now, all I can do is just ridethe wave of things, to cease my desires from intruding the vault of fate & destiny trying to be a step ahead the game of life,to let life flow, river-like, in whateverdirection it so desires& acknowledgeafter all that I'm human& so extend some grace& mercy to myself too, wheneverI stumble, ...
Poetry Column
By Eniola Abdulroqeeb ArowoloAchieving this much is already glory — Cavafy at the nape of mulberry, there's rot. i have watched it too, my life, descending like a boat caught in the ire of a storm. & i stand at the end of it all with an olive branchjittering at the crack of my lips— still offering water to ...
Poetry Column
By Olaore Durodola-Oloto on a grey afternoon in spring,when heaven eased its bowels, trickling upon earth, I learn the art of purgation: creased leaves on peeling branches slipping malady & dust earthwards. restless wagtails descending by the puddlefor a bath in the field. petrichor-scented breeze humming an eolian tune,as if to say: be unspooled from this indignation, ...
Poetry Column
By Ola W. Halim I. instead i wear guccis my sister benddown-selected at an evening flea market. i wear british-styled trousers cut from overdyed ankara. i wear super-endurant sandals supplicating the mercy of polish. i wear smiles the shape of crescents. i wear perfumes and body oils. i like smelling like chaparrals drenched in dew. ...
Poetry Column
By Adesiyan Oluwapelumi because prayerploughs the heart,digging up graves. Tonight,in the wooden conclaveof my small indwelling I listen for the silencesthat bring witnessesinto my skeleton heart. I watch God,in his fine and mighty khakimarch down like a brigadier into the battalion of my lungs.He measures every breathand every pause in-between. Sometimes,I feel his invisible eyes ...
Poetry Column
By Daniel Echezonachi & wet-bearded & long-throated & poised like the hilt of a scimitar. something with a river-long vein and a pliable hunger. something allergic to sunlight. below belts and above knees, something your mother won't tell you of its night visits. say boys raise buckets of sudsy water not so high, but high ...
Poetry Column
By Blessing Omeiza Ojo in memory of Dr. Adewumi Oluwadiya & her son. One of the women I stole for a mother lost her only son to the house of many floors on his birthday. Ah! igi ṣubú, igi kan ṣoṣo ní àgbàlá. The lone tree fell& the birds scattered. The blade? — anything, anything sharp. ...
News
By Flourish Joshua On the vibrant evening of May 23rd in Bradford, music, laughter, and cultural celebration converged at the highly anticipated UK Laugh & Sing concert organised by Tope Dada. Hosted at the Glory Community Centre, the event brought together an eclectic blend of music, live performance, comedy, poetry and communal expression in what ...
Poetry Column
By Muheez Olawale absence & silence weigh the samein poetryand in the anaconda threadof one-way conversations. a thousand angels twinkle in the night skyand this is how heaven announcesthe return of the belovedmelodies riding cold breeze into somnolence. the ascension falls a day too earlyand it’s a one-way conversationwith god but i know he’s thinkingi’d ...
Poetry Column
By Timileyin Adepoju The body is capable of miracles.After the shootout, blood foldsinto a halo and the angelsforsake their songs— the sightis a tempo brimmed with loops.What overcomers my people are?Their bones have tamed heavento its rot— the linen hoststhe sky in a feast of abundance.The incinerator is gagged with dreams,and the flames gift wings ...
Poetry Column
By Tobi Aluko You will find me seated,knees crossed, chair squeaking,while a poet recites a boring poem. I write poems for you,your smile,and the spring sun on your face. What is the poetry club?A place where starving artists mourn the collective destruction of our craft. In the poetry club,we listen to each otherand nitpick each other’s ...
Poetry Column
...earns praise as 'poet of the ineffable' Noirledge Publishing has announced the release of Entropy, a new poetry collection by Nigerian poet and publisher Servio Gbadamosi. The 118-page paperback collection, published in a 5.5 x 8.5-inch format, marks Gbadamosi’s third volume of poetry and continues his exploration of memory, spirituality, grief, nationhood and human endurance. ...
Poetry Column
By Ayiyi Joel All of my fears combined/taught me to run and hide —girl in red I could tell you to let the mask fall off, come out into the blinding rays with all that yourface holds, only if I wasn’t playacting myself. If I knew about all the raging storms the sea of your body keeps ...
Poetry Column
By Chukwu Emmanuel Seven hours of silence. Then the wordsleave the tip of his tongue like a bird, and swoopinto our hands. For a while we called our hands ark—let the birds perch, knowing if we love them, they will circle us backto the origin. I am twelve— the dark hemispheres of his hands —how ...