DisPlace: The Poetry of Nduka Otiono has been published by Wilfrid University Press as part of Canada’s most prestigious poetry series, Laurier Poetry Series (LPS).
Otiono made this known via an email announcing the publication October 28.
“Copies of the new book arrived at my Ottawa home two days ago. The book is more beautiful than I had imagined–what with the surprising bold green back cover that nicely contrasts with the black and white cover that coheres with Nigeria’s national colours. The great cover art by celebrated Nigerian-American fine artist and my friend Victor Ekpuk, also turned out really nice,” Otiono writes.
Below is the link to the book on the publisher’s website. It’s also available on Amazon and other major online book vendors and traditional bookstores across Canada and internationally.
https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/D/DisPlace
In the 134-page collection, Otiono engages actively with a diasporic world and 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two published collections, Voices in the Rainbow, and Love in a Time of Nightmares, and the volume includes previously unpublished new poems.
Peter Midgley’s introduction contextualises Otiono’s work within the frame of diaspora and newer critical frames like Afropolitanism, attending to form as well as his political engagement. The volume concludes with an afterword written by the poet with Chris Dunton.
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.
