Adedayo Agarau is a Nigerian poet, editor, and educator whose work explores themes of identity, loss, and resilience within the African experience. A Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, he holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Iowa, where he was awarded the Deena Davidson Friedman Scholarship, the John C. Shupe Scholarship, and the 2023 Summer Scholarship from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Agarau is the author of the chapbooks For Boys Who Went (Words Rhymes & Rhythm, 2017), Origin of Names (African Poetry Book Fund, 2020), The Arrival of Rain (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2020), and the forthcoming The Year of Blood (Fordham University Press, 2025). His works have been featured in Poetry Magazine, the Poetry Foundation, the Poetry Society of America, World Literature Today, and other esteemed publications. He has received numerous accolades, including the Poetic Justice Institute Book Prize for The Year of Blood, and was a finalist for the 2024 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. Agarau serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Agbowo Magazine and has edited for publications such as The Rumpus. He is also dedicated to teaching and mentoring aspiring writers, fostering the growth of the next generation of African literature.
KIS: You began your journey as a nutritionist but have since developed an impressive creative career, supported by renowned publications and academic achievements, including an MFA in Poetry from the University of Iowa and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford. How have these diverse experiences influenced your growth and perspective as a poet?
AA: I have been thinking, more recently, about the science of the liminal—how we can move from space to space, threading through difficulties or uncertainty, searching for answers to the questions the world presents. As Solnit reflects in A Field Guide to Getting Lost, “The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation.” Starting as a nutritionist provided the basin for critical analysis and enriched my pedagogy. I am not entirely sure when the switch happened or when I decided that this was what I was going to do for the rest of my life, but it didn’t truly sink in until my father, and I arrived in front of Dey House on an August morning.
I am most grateful to everyone who has held the doors open for us—how the dream persists because people have dreamed and lived the dream, our dreams. From the large classrooms in Federal Polytechnic Ede during my Pre-ND program in 2011 to the political struggles I experienced as a student leader to the cult clashes in Owo where I witnessed men beheading a student, Nigeria has informed my language of grief. Our life experiences workshop our language, our syntaxes. Our small lives have been workshopping our works, preparing us to tell our stories even more succinctly before arriving in Iowa.
I have enjoyed tremendous support from faculty members in Iowa—Elizabeth Willis, Mark Levine, Margaret Ross, Jim Galvin, and Tracie Morris—who believed in my stories, cried together with us in the workshop, and encouraged us to use curiosity to find answers to the questions the work requires. At Stanford, I found further guidance and inspiration in Patrick Phillips, Aracelis Girmay, Aaron Van Jordan, and Lamar Wilson. Both in the workshop and outside of it, I have experienced the most growth and gained the audacity to speak.
As Junot Díaz notes, “The workshop is where the alchemy of voice and experience transforms into story, where we learn not just to write, but to see each other’s worlds.” That alchemy—the transformation of voice and experience—has defined my journey, teaching me how to craft stories that answer, interrogate, and embrace the questions and silences of the world.
KIS: Your first chapbook, “For Boys Who Went,” published by Authorpedia Publishers, was pivotal in launching your career and became one of the most widely read Nigerian chapbooks in 2016/2017. Looking back, how did the success of this chapbook influence your path as a poet, and what impact did it have on your subsequent works?
AA: I think the success of For Boys Who Went was both affirming and transformative—especially since it was published at a time when young Nigerian writers were also experiencing attention that was timely and important. At the time of its publication, I was still grappling with the idea of myself as a poet, unsure of how my work might resonate beyond my immediate circle, so it was surprising how many people read the work—and how many people it inspired. Its reception was an awakening—proof that the stories I carried, the themes I explored, and the language I laboured over could find a home in readers’ lives.
I was in Ijebu Igbo this weekend, and most of my uncles called me For Boys Who Went. Until the publication, my uncles had no interest in literature. The popularity gave me a sense of responsibility to my audience and the work itself. It encouraged me to think more deeply about the narratives I wanted to tell about fathers, absences, and loss and the voices of sons and boys I wanted to center. It also sharpened my sense of what it means to write from and for a place of cultural specificity. Because I was in Nigeria, I didn’t think of the universality of my work, and I wasn’t concerned with it. I just wanted to write a collection that mirrors us as children. The poems in For Boys Who Went also dealt with grief, familial memory, and childhood—themes that have since become central to my practice, which I now explore in increasingly complex ways in my subsequent work, especially in my forthcoming debut collection, “The Years of Blood.” More practically, the success of the For Boys Who Went opened doors. It connected me to a network of other writers, publishers, and readers who have been integral to my growth. I am also sure it put my writing on the universal radar, although at that time, I didn’t know what that meant or looked like. It provided the visibility and confidence to pursue larger projects and take creative risks. Each poem I write now is still in conversation with those early works, and they have evolved from the foundation they laid.
KIS: “The Years of Blood,” your forthcoming book with Fordham University Press, explores deeply resonant themes. Could you tell us about the inspiration behind this work and what readers might expect?
AA: In a recent NBS report, Nigerians paid over N2.23 trillion as ransom to kidnappers in 12 months. Every day, someone is missing on Twitter. Human trafficking in Africa is grossly underreported. I grew up in Ibadan, on Ogunleye Street, near Liberty Stadium, which is a hub for child kidnaps in Ibadan. Taofeek came to school on Thursday, and that was the last time we saw him. When they found what was left of his body, it was near a bush near his father’s house on Joyce ‘B’ Road in Ibadan. I was kidnapped, too, as a child. The hysteria of loss moved through my childhood like a heavy hand touching every house. Our fathers took shifts protecting the street, burning tires. I document in The Years of Blood how all of these losses were happening in the backdrop of political restructuring, linking the desire for power and money to the need for body parts and ritualism. We have seen people get hacked in real life. We’ve heard news of women whose body parts were harvested and left on the street. I also grounded in the collection that what the West considers as speculative is everyday African life. I moved through collective grief, established that I am Yoruba and that my poetry thinks first in my mother tongue, the language in which I grieve and dream.
KIS: What drives the themes in your poetry, and how do you choose the focus for each collection?
AA: I may have mentioned this too many times, but my writing is heavily influenced by Carolyne Forche’s country language and Richard Siken’s iconographies, especially how his poems engage with his own painting and life. His obsession and depression, the plain of the field, the depth and the silence. Like Siken, I am interested in spaces and what comes and goes into and out—what goes through, what passage, what medium? In “For Boys Who Went,” for instance, I am thinking through family and absent fathers. In “The Year of Blood,” dead friends. In my two-time Sillerman finalist manuscript, “The Morning The Birds Died,” I am considering the space my grandmother left and how it opened a portal of dreams through which we communicated after her passing. My work engages with the fearful, precise, and spiritual and considers land empires of the body and physical geographies. In a developing manuscript, “The Book of Cain,” I am questioning empire, the creation and the destruction, and the concept of predestination and purity, which seeks to address colonial ideologies empowered by religion. See how all of my manuscripts are in conversation with one another? Even the titles and themes, although some take more world view than others, I am writing the same poems over and over, hoping to arrive at what seems like the shadow of an answer. The shadow, like Elijah, is all I need.
KIS: Many of your chapbooks, including “The Origin of Name” and “The Arrival of Rain,” have been widely recognized. How do your Nigerian roots influence the imagery, themes, or language in your poetry? Are there specific cultural elements that you feel compelled to explore?
AA: Yoruba impresses itself on you. If you once lived the language, you live the language forever. I cannot think of myself without my mother tongue and it was only normal I centered the language in ‘The Years of Blood’ because my Nigerian root is my only root.
I cannot thrive without the language of the cities that brought me up.
As Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o reflects in ‘Decolonising the Mind,’ language carries the weight of our culture, our memory, our entire way of being. The Yoruba language shapes how I speak, and how I see—each metaphor carries centuries of wisdom, each proverb a universe of meaning.
In my work, particularly in ‘The Years of Blood,’ I find myself echoing what Gloria Anzaldúa calls ‘linguistic terrorism’—that profound act of reclaiming one’s mother tongue in a world that often demands its silence. The imagery in my poetry emerges from what Édouard Glissant would call the ‘poetics of relation’—where the rhythms of Yoruba oral traditions meet contemporary forms, creating what Homi Bhabha describes as a ‘third space’ of cultural translation.
When I write of rain (in all the forms that appear—physically or in the third space), it’s not just precipitation—it carries the weight of what Wole Soyinka calls ‘the fourth stage,’ that liminal space where memory and myth converge. The cities that raised me—Lagos, Ibadan, Owo, Ede, Ijebu Igbo—speak through my lines as what Walter Benjamin would call ‘constellations’ of meaning, where each image is anchored in both personal memory and collective history. As Chinua Achebe once said, ‘Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.’ In my chapbooks, I strive to be both lion and historian, letting Yoruba take the grandness, letting the poet think first in the language of his father, and centering Yoruba’s profound philosophical understanding of existence, its ways of naming and knowing the world.
KIS: As Editor-in-Chief of Agbowo Magazine, you have a significant role in amplifying African literature. How has this editorial experience influenced your own writing journey?
AA: Agbowo serves as a prism through which African literary consciousness refracts in countless directions. Reading submissions illuminates how language carries cultural memory, political resistance, and personal transformation. In several of our past issues, we have tilted towards considering how the ephemeral is also eternal, the doorway between now and beyond, and how things transcend. What emerges through this work transcends individual narratives—we witness the emergence of a collective literary cartography, mapping experiences across the continent and diaspora. As Kwame Anthony Appiah theorizes in ‘In My Father’s House,’ African identities exist in constant dialogue with each other. Through editorial work, I’ve observed how writers from Nigeria to Kenya, South Africa and Botswana intersperse distinct local traditions into contemporary forms, whether prose or poetry.
Beyond my work, which I obviously care so much about, I think of the quality of works that move through the many portals of journals today. The drafts that cross my desk reveal both the vitality and the gaps in our literary ecosystem. While talent abounds, institutional support remains concentrated in particular regions and demographics. The profound work happening in places like Kampala or Dakar often struggles to find wider platforms. Writers in Zambia curate powerful narratives about urban transformation, while voices from Ouagadougou paint intricate portraits of social change. Yet, these stories frequently remain confined within national or linguistic boundaries. Africa is telling a single story and introducing the languages to tell it.
The question of access and visibility becomes particularly pressing when considering writers working in indigenous African languages. Our works offer unique perspectives on contemporary experience, filtered through linguistic frameworks that carry centuries of philosophical and cultural knowledge. The stories and poems we receive at Agbowo reveal how these linguistic traditions can enrich contemporary literary discourse that offers alternative ways of seeing and describing the world.
Digital platforms have begun to bridge some of these gaps, creating virtual spaces where writers from different regions can engage with each other’s work. However, the digital divide across the continent means these opportunities remain unevenly distributed. Some of the most innovative writing emerges from areas with limited internet connectivity, reminding us that technological solutions alone cannot address the structural inequalities in our literary landscape.
We must create infrastructures that connect writers from different regions, languages, and traditions. This means establishing more pan-African literary initiatives, translation projects, and mentorship programs. Regional writing workshops could be linked through travelling fellowships, creating circuits of exchange between literary communities. Publishing cooperatives could pool resources to increase the visibility of work from underrepresented regions.
The future of African literature lurks in fostering these connections— between emerging and established voices across linguistic boundaries and beyond geographic borders. Through such collaborative frameworks, we can facilitate a more inclusive and dynamic literary landscape that reflects the continent’s multiplicity of voices. The work ahead involves institutional building and imaginative leaps as we envision new ways of creating a literary community across expansive distances and diverse traditions.
KIS: As someone who has both taught and mentored emerging poets, how do you perceive the importance of mentorship in the arts? What do you aim to impart to your students?
AA: When I saw this question, I immediately thought of Audre Lorde’s position that poetry is not merely luxury but survival – it’s the scaffolding that holds our dreams together. My journey as a mentor began with this understanding. Each time I step into a classroom or sit down with a student, I carry Lorde’s wisdom about how poetry becomes a bridge between silence and articulation. Teaching has taught me that every emerging voice carries its light. I remember a student who brought a poem about her grandmother’s hands braiding her hair – how that simple image opened a larger conversation about inheritance, memory, and love. Another wrote about watching his father pray, and through revision, we discovered layers of meaning he hadn’t known were there. These moments remind me of what Sonia Sanchez calls ‘the living room of possibilities’—where poetry becomes a space of shared discovery. The mentor’s role shapes itself around each student’s needs. Sometimes, it means sitting in silence while they find their way to difficult truths. Other times, it requires gentle pushing – asking the questions that help them dig deeper into their experience. I’ve learned to listen not just to what’s on the page, but to what trembles beneath it.
As you know, I am a child of many parents. My career as a writer gives so much credit to writers who helped, devoted time to telling me I had something and edited me. I remember my dear aunty, Jumoke Verissimo, while editing my packet for the Brunel Prize in 2016, told me that I wasn’t writing for an African audience; how that helped me reevaluate my writing, ideologies, and philosophies.
My mentors showed me how criticism can be an act of love. They taught me that feedback isn’t about imposing a voice but helping writers locate their power.
Now, when I work with students, I think about how June Jordan emphasized the importance of technical excellence without sacrificing emotional truth. We spend hours discussing how line breaks can carry the weight of unspoken feelings, how metaphor can bridge the gap between personal and political, and how rhythm can echo the heartbeat of memory. But, perhaps the most profound aspect of mentorship is its cyclical nature. Yesterday’s students become today’s teachers, carrying forward what they’ve learned while adding their wisdom. I see them starting writing circles, founding literary magazines, and creating spaces for other voices to emerge. This ongoing cycle of nurture and growth reminds me that we’re all part of what Toni Morrison calls ‘the dance of an open mind’ —each generation teaching the next how to move to their own rhythm.
KIS: Looking ahead, what themes or issues do you envision exploring in future works? Are there specific ideas you’re currently passionate about?
I am currently at work on multiple things. A novel, maybe.
KIS: Your poetry often intertwines the personal with the political. How do you approach balancing these two dimensions in your writing?
AA: One of my philosophies is that the personal is political, so it is hard to think of dead people on the side of the road in Kogi and not think of the governor who embezzled at least 80 billion naira. The Years of Blood, although it does not give so much credit to the collective politics underway in the late 90s, is set in the backdrop of the chaos created.
KIS: Finally, as someone engaged in both Nigerian and international literary scenes, what are your hopes for the future of African poetry, both within the continent and globally?
AA: The future of African poetry fills me with so much urgency. I see extraordinary voices emerging across the continent—from spoken word artists in Nigeria to experimental poets everywhere else. Yet we need to build stronger bridges between these creative hubs. Our poetry is transforming. They are embracing both traditional forms and digital innovations and young writers are crafting verses in their mother tongues while engaging with global conversations. And I agree with Achille Mbembe who suggests that this isn’t about choosing between local and global—it’s about creating new forms that honour both.
My vision for the future is practical: more African-led publishing houses, more translation projects between African languages, and more platforms for critical dialogue.
We need poetry festivals that travel between cities, residencies that connect writers across regions, and digital spaces that make our work accessible to each other. The work has begun. Literary collectives are forming, new prizes are celebrating African languages, and translation initiatives are growing. Now we need to sustain this momentum, to ensure African poetry can thrive both at home and in the global conversation.