Malthouse Press Nigeria

Adedayo Agarau (@adedayoagarau) pushed back against the idea that writing produced outside Nigeria was less Nigerian. “You know, I always say that when someone is writing about living in the U.S. or in Los Angeles, they are writing that experience as a Black man, as someone with different roots. So the poetry is very Nigerian, because that is where it’s coming from.” His first chapbook, "For Boys Who Went," published in 2016, echoes the inherited burdens of masculinity, the violences boys learn to carry early on. In the then small but growing Nigerian online poetry scene, it became one of the most-read chapbooks, with over a thousand downloads on Arthorpedia, a platform owned by Kukogho Iruesiri Samson, who was also responsible for launching several other notable poetry careers. “I became that guy,” he chuckled, “the one who would write a poem, and suddenly everyone was writing their own version with the same title.” His uncles, uninterested in literature, began calling him For Boys Who Went. Read more: opencountrymag.com/what-aded…