Michael “Dammy” Aderibigbe (Poetry ’16) has just published his chapbook, In Praise of Our Absent Father, with Akashik Books!
About Dammy, Tsitsi Jaji says, “Here is a poet whose vision and empathy reach into the intimate corners of family history, bearing witness to generations of tenderness, violence, generosity, survival and imagination with rare precision.”
You can purchase a copy by writing to Dammy directly at dammyg1989 [at] gmail dot com.
Here is the title poem:
On the 5th day of a month
made of harmattan and cold sun,
my mother washed dirt off grains of rice,
chopped carrots, onions, pepper
and liver on a slab into rings —
beating our stomachs to music.
My older sister slit open
the belly of a huge Eja Kote —
packed out its intestine as one offloads
clothes from a bag. Beads of sweat slipped
down their faces like rain on windshields.
The sitting-room: strands of Juju
melody streamed out of the stereo —
the house covered with music.
From the kitchen: my mother’s efforts smelled
delicious. My mother wore
aso-oke — she danced, and we ate —
raising cups in praise of her loneliness.
Congratulations, Dammy!
D.M. Aderibigbe is from Nigeria. His chapbook, In Praise of Our Absent Father,is an APBF New Generation African Poets Chapbook Series selection. He is a recipient of 2015 Honours from Dickinson House and The Entrekin Foundation. His poems appear in Alaska Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, cream city review, DIAGRAM, Normal School, Notre Dame Review, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, RATTLE, and Spillway, which nominated him for the 2017 Puschcart Prize. He’s been featured on Verse Daily. His first manuscript received a special mention in the 2015 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets.
