Childhood

You can’t afford to miss Jomo by 7am. In a school where Mrs. Nwokejiegebe was more feared than the Headmistress, you’re better off missing school for the day than turning up late. We lived in the suburbs. But if you made it to the bus stop early enough to catch Jomo, it was a one-way […]

Mummy Tobe sat in the spacious living room of her one-bedroom apartment, her jaw set firmly on her hand and her hand set firmly on her leg. Her expression was one of deep thought. Her eyes fixed on the linoleum floor and peered into the unknown. Her friend Agnes was sitting on the same sofa […]

Born in Tede, Nigeria, Ifeoluwa Ayandele is a poet with work in Callaloo, Poetry London, Magma, Michigan Quarterly Review, among other publications. Besides being shortlisted for the Wisconsin Poetry Series’ Brittingham & Felix Pollak Prize and the 2024 Autumn House Rising Writer Prize in Poetry, he has received the 2026 Pink Poetry Prize from Great […]

there we perched at the heels of the rock, as we watched the dramatic retreat of the sun.   with trembling limbs crying guts and misty balls, in silence, we prayed.   caught between wala’s fall and nosi’s rebound, we saw nothing save the glimpse of our glorious return. Mohammed Yusuf-Unyomo is a Nigerian poet, […]

The mythology goes – my father’s unruliness earned him a place at the Ransome Kútì School: Straight into that institution, don’t pass go, don’t collect N200, he went. Abeokuta Grammar School was known for the severe corporal punishments and beatings administered to pupils. Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the world-renowned Afrobeat pioneer, once wistfully reminisced on the […]