Listen to Saddiq Dzukogi read “Bakandamiya IX.” published in Shō No. 6 (Winter 2024/25). We nominated this poem for Best Spiritual Literature.
About this poem: This is an excerpt from “Bakandamiya: An Elegy,” a book-length epic poem set in northern Nigeria. “Bakandamiya” will be released on December 1 and is available for preorder from The African Book Fund via University of Nebraska Press.
Saddiq Dzukogi is a Nigerian poet and assistant professor of English at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is the author of Your Crib, My Qibla (Nebraska, 2021), winner of the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry and the Julie Suk Award and shortlisted for the Nigeria Prize for Literature. His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Narrative Magazine, Ploughshares, Guernica Magazine, Poetry London, Best American Experimental Writing Anthology, and Cincinnati Review. He has received fellowships from the Nebraska Arts Council, Mississippi Arts Commission, and Cave Canem.