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Poet's Talk

Poets Talk: 5 Questions with John Chinaka Onyeche

I am that song you nod and hum to but still can’t sing along with, because, sometimes, it’s too deep. Yet, it flows, attracting passersby who know nothing of the sadness within. ...

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Poets Talk: 5 Questions with Kayeon Onyeka

Poets Talk: 5 Questions with Jakky Bankong-Obi

Poets Talk: 5 Questions with Odu Ode

KSR Specials

Three Poems by Sulaiman Zailani

Three Poems by Sulaiman Zailani || The Bala Selection

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Three Poems by Toyin Adewale-Gabriel

Three Poems by Toyin Adewale-Gabriel || The Bala Selection

Three Poems by Usman Karofi

Three Poems by Usman Karofi || The Bala Selection

From Our Columnists

How to Understand Poetry

How to Read Poetry | Sumaila Isah Umaisha

This is why I believe that, when reading a poem, we should pay less attention to what we imagine the poet intended to say and more attention to what the poem itself communicates. Instead of asking only, What has the poet said? we should also ask, What is the poem saying? What does it evoke in me? What meanings can I discover in its images, symbols, metaphors, language, structure, and silences?

The Woman Who Made Us Wait

The Woman Who Made Us Wait | Aliyu Jalal

I think about this now, sitting beside her bed, listening to the difficult machinery of her breathing, and I find myself revisiting some of the memories I had filed away as childhood grievances. .. Age has a way of returning old memories to us with their labels removed.

Poetic Soundscapes of Morocco – #Andrea

I would go on to discover that the opportunity to read poems in Morocco liberated the silenced voice within me: the empathic pain I had carried in my body, shaped by the violence of the world, by barbarity that tears away people's dignity and lives.

Reading Bewitchment in Nasiba Babale’s Pickled Moments

Seen through the symbolic lens of alchemy, Babale’s self-fashioning as “Poet of Light” works out a transmutation of value: what history has rendered base or obscured—blackness, the self denied—is worked upon until it gleams with renewed worth. Like the alchemist who turns lead into gold, she converts silence into speech and stigma into power, not through softness but through a revelatory force that disturbs settled orders. Her illumination is thus a form of spiritual alchemy—witchcraft as transformation—where revelation does not merely disclose truth but remakes the terms by which beauty and being are known.

Black Poets

Black Poets: Ikeogu Oke.

Ikeogu Oke was a Nigerian poet and journalist who died in Abuja on November 27th, 2018, at 51. He hailed from Ohafia in south-eastern Nigeria and was considered a deeply spiritual person. He sought to embody traditional African beliefs, notably wearing the Ohafia war dress to high-profile events to highlight his Igbo heritage. 

Black Poets: Warsan Shire.

Black Poets: Véronique Tadjo.

Black Poets: Bassey Ikpi.

A Letter to Reason – #Luqman

As always, I come to you today with a problem: a crisis of thought, the long-term utility of embracing one’s passion on the one hand and the gnawing need for financial independence on the other. We have discussed both extensively enough to allow for a nuanced understanding.

Surviving Love and a Pandemic – #Malumfashi

Most people are wearing cloth made masks they lower to their chins when they want to talk to you – there is something about the need to communicate with the lips visible, moving. Some are wearing matching Ankara and facemask prints, in a fashion statement that even Covid-19 cannot mask.

The Needlessness of Definitions – #Sabouke

I Hate Poetry – #Naseeba

Most importantly, I hate poetry for teaching me how to love. Poetry made a lover out of me. Before poetry, I didn’t know that the gaze from my lover’s eyes could loosen my joints. I didn’t know that a single touch of his hands could melt me like candle wax. . .

In The Poetry of Life by Naseeba Babale

In The Poetry of Life | Nasiba Babale

That being said. What on God’s green earth is wrong with you? I do not understand you at all! You have caused me a lot of trouble, embarrassed me, put me in situations where only the Grace of God saved me, and made me look stupid in places where I was supposed to maintain my steeze. And if you cared to know anything about me, you would know that I take my steeze seriously.

In The Poetry of Life: Seven Reasons Why I Don’t Let My Mother Read My Poems  | Nasiba Babale

In The Poetry of Life: The Poetic Side of Melancholy | Nasiba Babale

In The Poetry of Life: Things I Remember About My Grandmother | Nasiba Babale

Everything Here

Four Poems from The Architecture of Curtains | Ismail Bala

"The poems in The Architecture of Curtains reject the finality of resolutions. This chapbook interrogates the fragile boundary existing between the inner and external components in the complex existence of life." — Odu Ode, Publisher.

Three Poems by Abduljalal Musa Aliyu

Three Poems by Abduljalal Musa Aliyu || The Bala Selection

Three Poems by Abduljalal Musa Aliyu. These poems by Jide Badmus were especially chosen for The Bala Selection, a weekly poetry feature curated by Ismail Bala for Konya Shamsrumi.

Three Poems by Jide Badmus || The Bala Selection

Three Poems by Jide Badmus. These poems by Jide Badmus were especially chosen for The Bala Selection, a weekly poetry feature curated by Ismail Bala for Konya Shamsrumi.

Zamfara Nights || Kolawole Oludare Stephen

Movement at the edge of your vision — maybe a man, maybe a shadow. You hold your breath. The darkness folds around you.