DisPlace

A selection of poetry from Otiono's previous collections that engage with multiple poetic traidtions and engage with Afripolitan life in the diaspora.

Otiono Nduka :

Nduka Otiono is 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.

Midgley Peter :

Peter Midgley is 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 Alberta’s Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry.

Otiono is constantly dialoguing with the ethical dilemma of history and tradition, political and literary, whether bardic—Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Neruda, and Ginsberg—or Nigerian—Christopher Okigbo, Femi Oyebode, Sola Osofisan, and Niyi Osundare. And, in so doing, he produces a geospatial context that accurately depicts his lived experience, his grief, and his message. The result is a compelling odyssey of episodes, each evocative of their own personages and dénouements, each establishing Nduka Otiono as a troubadour (as he says himself), a pilgrim, and bard. Through each of these personalities, Nduka Otiono is never esoteric, solipsistic, or irreverent; rather, he is always present, nostalgic, and rhapsodic. -- Jay Miller, ARC Poetry

Chris Dunton:

The most personal of Otiono’s poems are mostly elegiac, with death pawing at the door, and the language swaying with a new, lithe spring to it and the strength one associates with fine, high-tensile wire. The poet’s imagistic reflections on life are at once sonorous, contemplative, bold, and defiant.

— Chris Dunton, Professor of Literature in English and former Dean of The Faculty of Humanities at The National University of Lesotho, Roma

George Elliott Clarke:

DisPlace is the contradictory being of Nduka Otiono: He’s “here” in Canada, but he’s also a dissident resident of Nigeria. He exists in the self-appointed Shangri-La that is the once-boastfully slaveholding Americas; but he insists on remaining the anointed exorcist of an Africa still decadent with bullets, with “militicians,” who play baboons rather than messiahs.

—George Elliott Clarke, Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada, 2016-17