Poetry

Tares Oburumu is a Nigerian poet born in the creeks of Bayelsa and raised amid the socio-economic and cultural tensions of the Niger Delta region. His poetry is marked by formal and structural elegance; through it, he affirms his humanity and interrogates the illusions of post-independence Nigeria. His work has appeared in international journals that […]

“EKOSIMBA” (Mlimani Editions) is a multilingual anthology of 63 poems by contemporary Congolese writers from the African continent and global Diaspora. Primarily translated into English, it will be released during Congo Week as a non-profit project. 63 POEMS, ONE MESSAGE: to increase visibility for the Congolese literary community, including both emerging and established writers, and […]

Opobo, Notebook IslandIn the beginning was the rafting, too, before the empty ships made of conquest arrived at the shore where Pepple was the king, where the world was one world, as soft as silk moving the air. We, the sea-dwellerswere capable of love in the way the waters flow endlessly on their own axis. […]

OlongoAfrica Press is pleased to announce the publication of The New Anthology of Young African and African American Poetry, a collection that galvanizes emerging poets from Africa and the African American community/diaspora in a shared literary space. Since its inception, OlongoAfrica has recorded different literary successes and publications of new books as part of its […]

Somewhere in BornoIit lingers, the sorrow, like a mist as men sit on benches with tumblers of ginin hands, smoke from bummed cigars drifting aboutthe atmosphere—the only mechanismmy countrymen have invented to disembody ache.IIa foreigner once asked why the children herewear old faces: i told him to wear his caution perfectly well. the bullets don’t […]

1.I have climbed all the mountains in the world. I have climbed the tallest trees to their apical leaves. I have cruised the endless waters to the points where the earth kisses the sky, or back to my starting point in Lagos on the occasion when I kept westfor four hundred years for refusing to […]

How can one become a worthy citizen of the world, a patriot of his country, and an active member of his community if he or she has no knowledge of his or her ancestry? This appears to be the implied question which Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto’s full-length poetry collection, The Naming (University of Nebraska Press, 2025) profoundly […]

O heavens, hear me now…Hear me on the edge of this wilderness, Ripping off my heart to you, calling out,A traveller at crossroads, in this thicket.Haven’t you heard me cry out to you?Haven’t you heard my voice of lament?Sometimes the day feels dry, Like rotten oranges decaying in my mouth.Sometimes the night comes too often,With […]

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 […]

A poet and his nation in flight. First, the poet’s country, Uganda – an ill-fated Icarus – flew with delirium, overreached itself mid-flight, and plunged into the abyss of postcolonial chaos. The other, the poet – a reclaimed Icarus–is pulled into exile by the instinct for survival and escape from state victimhood. This is the […]