Full Description
Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets
All that Refuses to Die is a poetry collection that interrogates the present conditions of Africans through a historical lens. Michael Imossan moves into historical spaces such as museums and sites of enslavement, touching artifacts that hold meaning, and asking, Where was Africa? Where is Africa now? And what has changed? The Biafran War that claimed three million lives, though declared over, still has its lingering effect on Nigeria and Nigerians. Congo, though free of King Leopold and the exploitation of cotton, is still not free of other kinds of exploitation, nor is Uganda. Though the slave trade has ended, African bodies are still found in the Sahara Desert and in the Atlantic Ocean.
All that Refuses to Die is a collection that brims with stories and memories that evoke as well as provoke. As he moves through historical places, the poet compares the past with the present and finds that nothing has really changed.
Contents
Foreword by Kwame Dawes
Acknowledgements
Stories that I Must Open
True Story
Collector of Hurt
Tiira
Arise News
What Death Can Be Offered All that Refuses to Die?
I Want to Lavender
With What Heart Will She Forgive?
Going Home to Mother
Run
The Philosophy of Escape
In the Centre of All that Refuses to Die
Please, Native Me
The Door of No Return
I. A Lineage of Water
II.
III.
IV.
V.
Naming
No Victor, No Vanquished
Breaking news
Deborah
Calling the Name of God in Vain
The Necromancy of Dead Protesters
Southern Kaduna
Herdsmen
The Nigerian Dream
Given Another Chance
One Day I Will Relive My Memories
Tell Me About Home
Softness Lives Here
Welcome to Cameroun
What do I Have?
Ocean
I Will Go Back Home
Sinking Song
Three Nigerias
Waiting for Tomorrow to Turn Green
There's No Hell in Love, Only Heaven
The Complicity of Language/All That Refuses to Die
Kofar Na'Isa
Daughters of Me
Lexis and Suffering
Aiding and Abetting Joy
Shame
Suffocating songs
Sand Food
Because All Has Refused to Die
Because Nigerian Poets Shouldn't Be Writing About Love and Ice-creams
Rose-Petal-Girl
NYSC
All That Refuses to Die is Dead
Notes and Source Acknowledgments
