Nobel laureate Professor Wole Soyinka will preside over a gathering of 11 poets drawn from across the globe on Thursday, March 19, as ProvidusBank stages its 2026 World Poetry Day Café under the theme “Power and Order: Freedom and Illusion”. The event begins at 5pm at the Wole Soyinka Centre for Culture and Creative Arts, formerly the National Theatre at Iganmu on Lagos Mainland.
Curated by the Culture Advocates Caucus (CAC) and directed by Jahman Anikulapo, the annual evening titled ProvidusBank World Poetry Day Café: An Evening with Wole Soyinka has since 2020 assembled some of the most distinct voices in contemporary world poetry to reflect on urgent human concerns. Past editions have engaged with environmental preservation, youth and female empowerment, migration and socio-cultural pluralism.
This year’s theme invites both poets and audience into a session of deliberate reckoning with the forces that shape society: the nature of order and freedom, and the illusions that sustain power in a conflicted world. Each poet will present a reading or spoken word performance before an audience expected to include corporate executives, members of the creative community, and members of the public.
Leading the international contingent is Yolanda Castaño of Spain, widely regarded as the foremost name in contemporary Galician poetry. Winner of the Spanish National Award for Poetry in 2023, the highest honour for a poet in Spain, Castaño has published eight collections in Galician and Spanish, with solo volumes in English, Italian, French and more than a dozen other languages. Her work has been presented across over 40 countries, and she directs an international writer’s residence in Galicia.
Portuguese novelist and poet Valter Hugo Mãe, born in colonial Angola, joins the bill with a literary career that has spanned more than 20 countries. Winner of the prestigious José Saramago Prize in 2007, Mãe is celebrated for an intense prose style and his evocative exploration of human vulnerability. One of his most acclaimed works was recently adapted into a Netflix film by a Brazilian production.
From Germany comes Maryam Palizban, poet, scholar and actress, whose work stands at the intersection of performance, religion, and cultural theory. A PhD holder from Freie Universität Berlin, she has published two volumes of poetry in Persian and releases work in both Persian and German. She is a celebrated figure in Iranian cinema, with acclaimed roles at Cannes, Rotterdam, and the Berlinale.
Rounding off the international quartet is Mohsen Emadi, an Iranian-Mexican poet, translator, filmmaker and programmer. Emadi’s poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies and earned him international prizes including the International Prize of Poesía de Miedo (Spain, 2010). He is the founder and editor of the Persian Anthology of World Poetry and holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
The Nigerian poets represent a cross-section of the country’s most vital contemporary voices. Dike Chukwumerije, a trained lawyer turned spoken word artist and award-winning author, has eight published books to his credit and has taken his poetry and theatre production Made in Nigeria on extensive national tours. He is founder of the Dike Chukwumerije Center and has since 2013 hosted the annual Night of the Spoken Word.
Poet Bá Sabouke (Abdulazeez Sirajo Illo of Niger State), known for blending Sufism, surrealism and eroticism, brings to the stage an imaginative world in which the spiritual and the sensual converge. A joint winner of the 2016 WRR Green Author Prize, Sabouke’s anticipated debut full collection, Waistbeads and Rosaries, is due for release by Masobe on 31 March 2026.
Benin City-born Oloruntobiloba Abiodun (Tobi Abiodun), best known for popularising the use of Nigerian Pidgin in performance poetry, is a storyteller whose work bridges poetry, music and film. He has performed at the Poetry Africa Festival in Durban and the Lagos International Poetry Festival, produced spoken word for Guinness Nigeria, and is the founder of the virtual poetry workshop Before the Silence, with alumni across the United States and Europe.
Abuja poet Pacella Chukwuma-Eke, a consecutive slam champion and two-time Pushcart nominee, has been shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize and the Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize, among others. Her debut collection is titled Love in its Bliss and Sins.
Port Harcourt’s Nwani Emmanuel Chidera, who performs as Grey Martyr, is a multidisciplinary creator and co-founder of Eden, a literary hub in Owerri. Winner of the LIPfest Poetry Grand Slam 2024 and the K.E.E.P Prize 2026, he represented Nigeria at the World Slam 2025 and the African Slam Cup 2025.
Lagos poet and spoken word artist Ayomide Fasedu (Mide Fash) made her debut in 2022 with the self-published The Ashes Have Their Own Stories, shortlisted twice for literary awards including the 2022 SPRINGNG Women Author’s Prize. A multi-instrumentalist and sound engineer, her writing centres on women, healing, femininity, queerness, and social justice.
Completing the line-up is Abuja poet Hafsat Abdullahi, known as Havfy, a multi-award-winning performance poet and United Nations Young Leader for the Sustainable Development Goals, with over one million social media followers. She has addressed global institutions including TEDx, UNICEF, the World Bank, the UN Security Council, and UNAIDS, and is a member of the Grammy Recording Academy.
UNESCO proclaimed World Poetry Day in 1999 to support linguistic diversity through poetic expression and to widen opportunities for languages, particularly endangered ones, to be heard. The 2026 Lagos celebration is free and open to the public.
