Saskatoon -- Isolation -- Transition -- The artist -- Traveler -- Away from Lagos -- My Chicago -- The student -- On the cusp of conquest -- Prebendal blues -- Shadows -- In difference -- The clothes of memories -- Take a knee -- #endSARS -- Bubu -- Simulacrum -- Field of dreams -- Hot spot -- Life elsewhere -- Sai baba -- Influenza -- Baba's child -- Again -- #BringBackOurGirls -- I am a militant -- Volcano -- The odor of their mouths -- Sunset -- If we must sing -- Voices -- Tokunbo -- Desert journey -- Freedom -- Insurrectional -- If all I get -- I feel like dreaming about you tonight -- These heartstrings -- Like I have never seen the sky -- To hold and not have -- Crossroads -- Oju loro wa -- the face of discourse -- Starry -- The other side of my coin -- Adumaradan -- This night is ours -- She came before Iwalewa -- Echolalia -- Where the rivers mix -- Night of the silent drums -- Wayfarer -- Death of an unharried poem -- One meets two -- Ancestors -- Lord of the crossroads -- Mother Earth.
Summary:
"Where the Baedeker Leads uncovers the many delicate layers that lie in the spaces between departures and arrivals, offering memories and stories. As a historically specific guidebook for travels, the Baedeker emerges as a cultural metaphor of navigating multiple geographies, even as it leads both to and away from the obvious meanings in the poems; but it is also a useful instrument that points to a recurrent theme in the collection, the idea of motion and displacement. Whether it's about journeys, personal transitions, or changes in the seasons, the reader is drawn to the personal experiences and social conditions that push people away from home to new landscapes, sights, and encounters that remind them of the times and place they have so painfully left behind. "Although the politics of my Nigerian homeland also animates several of the poems, their most abiding rumination is the enunciation of the constancy of change and the uncertain disruption of fixities. The nodes of human experiences become evident in poems that not only make legible the enduringly harsh realities of winter storms and frostbites, but also evoke the initial adversities of home that so traumatized you that you still feel the best gestures of love must be from afar.""-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.