Welcome to Konya Shamsrumi, the capital of African poetry.

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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. ...

Poets Talk: 5 Questions with Kayeon Onyeka

Poets Talk: 5 Questions with Jakky Bankong-Obi

Poets Talk: 5 Questions with Odu Ode

Three Poems by Sulaiman Zailani || The Bala Selection

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

Three Poems by Usman Karofi || The Bala Selection

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 | 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.

Festival of Drums || Star Zahra

The masqueraders If you look close enough are hallways of walls between two worlds. And when we falter, they fall Not to the earth but on us They are the dictators.

In The Poetry of Life: The Last Stanza | Nasiba Babale

But life isn't always like poetry, it hardly ever starts from the last stanza. Sometimes, you have no idea if there will be a last stanza at all, or if it will continue in long lines that do not have an end. Like the cliffhangers at the end of thrillers. And these cliffhangers of life... these events that continue to infinity like a recurring decimal, are the parts of life I struggle to deal with. My mind shifts and fidgets endlessly when it goes on a journey that does not seem to have an end.

The Infancy of Intuition – #Luqman

Thus, it is surmisable that whoever will contemplate the past eternity during which the world was not in existence and the future eternity during which it will not exist, will see that it is like a journey, in which the stages represented by years, the leagues by months, the miles by days and the steps by moments.

Swimming in the Ocean. Together? – #Andrea

I still sit in absolute darkness. A voice. A soulful voice which becomes a place of shelter, a resort: A voice to heal the wounds of darkness and to chase the ghosts. The three artists speak out images of the past, sitting on the floor when light slowly guides us out of the darkness, their voices put the memories in place.

Sisi Akoko Magazine

Chinua Achebe Appears In Gen Z Style, Declares A New Version Of Vulture— Selfishness Bruh

From Rappers And Poets, Umar Farouk Adeiza Reveals His Relationship With Words.

Kindergarten Maths Is Hard Says Nigerian Poet, Ayobami Kayode.

…To Write Memories That Tears You Apart After Haruki Murakami.

From The Editor

Konya Shamsrumi Publishes Tanure Ojaide’s Adult Love

Konya Shamsrumi Publishes Tanure Ojaide’s Adult Love ...

[News Alert] Garba Dakaskus Sighted at Roving Heights Bookstore, Abuja

BIRTHING WORDS: Will you buy my words… or An Author’s Short Introspection on His Writing Odyssey – Tope Ogundare

Café 24

Cafe 24 || Winner: Lost And Found By Stephen Olayemi.

Cafe 24 || Winner: Future Plans by Akumbu Uche

Cafe 24: Call For Submissions.

Cafe 24 || Winner: I Am North By Shehu Mubarak Sulaiman

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.