Two Lyrical and Moving Poems From Nigerian Poets That Will Change Your Outlook

Poetry is an outlet to explore personal, social, political, and economic issues through imagery and emotion. In the five decades since Nigeria established its independence, poetry has been an integral part of its literary scene.

Nigerian poets are visionary writers and social reformers, artists who create moments of quiet reflection and loud rebellion. Here are two poems we love from two distinctive Nigerian writers.

Tomi Adesina

Tomi Adesina was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and is a fiction blogger and screenwriter. In 2013, she won the Nigerian Blog Awards for her blog fiction series, and her screenplay Fiesty John about cyberbullying won the 2015 Homevida Prize; watch the short film. She also won the Nigerian Writers Award for Best Young Writer in 2015, and her short stories have been featured in magazines across Africa. She lives in Lagos, where she is working on a new novel. Read her online fiction on her website.

Her poem ‘Part Me’ was inspired by the photo of these women.

Part Me by Tomi Adesina

• Part my hair, part it in two.
• Part my fears, take a part for you.
• Part my body, find yourself in it.
• Part my soul, build your home in me.
• Part my hair, oil its land.
• Part my hair, till its soil.
• Part my hair, make me beautiful.
• Part me, be a part of me.

Saddiq Dzukogi

Nigerian poet Saddiq Dzukogi is the author of Your Crib, My Qibla, coming from the University of Nebraska Press in 2021. The poems in the book are a tribute to his daughter Bahra who died in 2017. His poems have appeared in Oxford Review of Books, Kenyon Review, Oxford Poetry, Salamander, and many others. He was a finalist for the 2017 Brunel International African Poetry Prize and is currently a Ph.D. student in English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Follow him on Twitter.

There Is No Scar, Only Absence by Saddiq Dzukogi

• After Assar, I sit on the tail end
• of our house where birds nest

• on a lemon tree. A snake

• bunches half its body on a height,
• while the rest creeps along a branch,

• niggling its head sluggishly

• into a nest, and as the yard grows quiet,
• feasts on newly laid eggs. In my hands

• a thread goes into another thread,

• until a blanket grows out of my crochet
• and rests on my lap. Night, like my blanket,

• covers what light remains

• of the day. I reach deep

• into my throat and say a prayer;

• of the many things that can kill me
• death is not one of them. However,

• the earth is the snake that will

• consume me like an egg.
• I’ll live longer than the silence a corpse

• leaves behind.

• Nothing of the eggs remains.

• But, as for me, my stories will linger

• like a neckbone
• that can withstand a hangman’s noose.

• Tomorrow, when mother bird returns,

• I’ll repeat my wife’s mantra;
• a scar is not a flaw, just a story
• that sticks to our skin.

Top image courtesy of iyinoluwa John Onaeko/Unsplash.