I was becoming so good, too good that I could write someone’s destiny. So when my muse became tired of my poetic praises and my love, I lost all purpose. Soon I became an empty quill. Speechless. I reduced myself to a spectator, attending poetry events and festivals in Kano, Abuja, Kaduna or wherever I could, and from afar I’d cheer online performers in Orange Poetry, Hilltop or Alitfest, while I go snap, snap, snap, or fire emoji, fire emoji.

After reviewing thousands of applications from Africa and the Diaspora, the LOATAD Black Atlantic Residency supported by Hawthornden Foundation have picked 10 applicants for their 2025 residency including Abdulrazaq Salihu.

There are many ways to read “A Cult of Fireflies”— the best, in the company of a lover, a private picnic in a lush garden under the sun. Because each poem is a box of sweet, each stanza, a smile unwrapped, each line, a glass of wine.

Following the release of Jamila Abbas's poetry collection, "Between the lines of a photograph", the official launch of the collection is set to take place on the 23rd of November, 2024 at 3:00 pm at Moeshen cafe, Abuja, Nigeria.

The 26th edition of the yearly ritual of the LAGOS BOOK & ART FESTIVAL, LABAF, holds November 11-17 at its traditional base, Freedom Park, Lagos Island, as well as Virtually.

While growing as a little girl, I found pleasure in looking at the sky.

Under the aegis of PIN ARTHUB, Nigeria's leading spoken word poet, Sage Hassan is set to lead a team of A-list performance/spoken word poets to the 26th edition of Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF). In the team are the foremost Comrade Poet and curator of Aj House of Poetry in Lagos, Dagga Tolar, award winning storyteller and poet Toby Abiodun, artist/performance poet, Evelyn D'Poet, winner of several performance and spoken word poetry contests, Kemi Bakare (aka Kemistree), Adigun Olushola (Solaspeaks) and renowned performance/spoken word poets, Bold Seth, Tirwister Tiwistar, Solutionist Clementina and Jacob Sukpa respectively.

Titled Ujana, the Swahili translation of the english word, Youth, the chapbook captures the zeitgeist of Nairobi and East Africa, with the poems in it presented as urgent and important portraits of what it feels like to be a young artist in the region at this current age.

In 2023, my primary motivation was to express my frustration built up from a conflict of self-identity. I was (and still am) navigating this crisis: as the eldest son, a male child, and, in my parents' eyes as of 2017, something of a disappointment due to my decision to abandon my initial ambition of becoming a Catholic priest. I remember in 2017, after deciding not to continue with the vocation, I didn't gain admission to my preferred university to study the course I was passionate about (fortunately, I am now in the clinical year of that program).

I read the entire compendium of Shakespeare’s sonnets in junior high school, not having the slightest idea what he was talking about in most of them, but loving the sounds and the mathematical arrangements of the words. Love Is Not Love (sonnet cxvi) is still a favourite. At the peak of my identity crises when I started to terribly fear that I did not belong and perhaps never would, I discovered Emily Dickinson. And there she was, speaking to my spirit. In the same way that the Psalms did which was a powerful crutch for me as I was estranged from religion at the time.