DisPlace: The Poetry of Nduka Otiono [Paperback]

DisPlace: The Poetry of Nduka Otionoengages actively with a diasporic world: Otiono is equally at home critiquing petroculture in Nigeria and in Canada. His work straddles multiple poetic traditions and places African intellectual history at the forefront of an engagement with Western poetics.

The poems in this selection are drawn from Otiono's two published collections,Voices in the Rainbow,andLove in a Time of Nightmares, and the volume includes previously unpublished new poems. Peter Midgley’s introduction contextualizes Otiono’s work within the frame of physical and spiritual mobility, diaspora, and newer critical frames like Afropolitanism, attending to form as well as his political engagement. The volume concludes with an interview of the poet by Chris Dunton that touches on the nature of poetry, language loss, and diasporic identities.

Nduka Otionois an Associate Professor of African Studies and English at Carleton University in Ottawa. Formerly a journalist and General Secretary of the Association of Nigerian Authors, his publications include two poetry books and a collection of short stories,The Night Hides with a Knife,winner of the ANA/Spectrum Prize for fiction.



|Peter Midgleyis an independent scholar, writer, and editor. He is the author twelve books for children and adults, including three volumes of poetry. His latest book of poetry,let us not think of them as barbarians, was shortlisted for the Writers Guild of Albertas Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry.

DisPlaceis the contradictory being of Nduka Otiono: Hes here in Canada, but hes also a dissident resident of Nigeria. He exists in the self-appointed Shangri-La that is the once-boastfully slaveholding Americas; but he insists ló