Congratulations to Adedayo Agarau, winner of the 2024 C.P. Cavafy Prize.

I first met Adedayo Agarau in 2015 at a spoken word event in Ibadan, the southwestern Nigerian city we both grew up in. I remember watching his poetry, technically excellent on the page, come alive th...

In a dream on one of my first nights in Iowa, I was weeping into a river. The river was flowing swiftly, washing away many people. In the logic of the dream, I knew their faces—they were the same c…

Adedayo Agarau Email Forms

Poets & Writers has announced the 2025 poetry cohort for Get the Word Out, a publicity incubator for early career writers. The program gives selected writers an opportunity to work with an expe…

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Laila Lalami, Goretti Kyomuhendo, Chisom Okafor, Itiola Jones, Adedayo Agarau: the anticipated books of 2025.

Last year, we published a list of books we were excited to read and eventually enjoyed. The list featured Chigozie Obioma; Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond; ‘Pemi Aguda, whose debut collection, Ghostroots, w…

Two poems by Adedayo Agarau.

Each of these anticipated books promises to keep us occupied with stories, feelings, and facts about Africa.

ALT: a man with a beard wearing suspenders and a tie is standing in a room .

Poem with a Line from an Asterisk on page 15 of Marguerite Yourcenar’s Dark Brain of Piranesi We hang this morning over a twine line   like laundry betweenthe seesaw and the pendulum.   Smoke a few wo...

Adedayo Agarau reviews Ajibola Tolase’s poetry collection “2000 Blacks.”

The Nigerian poet and editor of Agbowo's "searing" The Years of Blood has "vivid, unsettling imagery drawing on Yoruba cosmology and folklore." It is forthcoming in Fall 2025.