Letter to Patience (Seren) 2006 WINNER OF COSTA AWARD
My Poetry Books
First the Desert Came and then the Torturer (RAG Press, Zaria), 1986
This was written under the name of Idi Bukar and deals with the Nigeria mainly in the 1980s from the point of view of this radical poet. He responds to the Shagari government, military rule, and the position of the radical intellectual in the university, also with a mythical revolutionary Guevaresqu figure, 'Dan Foco', who stands for a kind of hope for change in the country.
The title means 'stranger's quarter' and is used of non-Hausa areas of Hausa cities. Part Two of the book is here, and records my first responses to living first in Kano and then Zaria, the sharpness that, and the love relations that went with it. Part One in the Britain I left in 1970, but also deals with childhood.Anthologies I've contributed to
The Committed Individual (Penguin,1971)
London Magazine Poems (Harvill,1985)
National Poetry Competition (1992)
Arvon Competition (2002, 2004)
Tying the Song (Enitharmon,2000)
Sabon Gari (London Magazine editions) 1974
Letter to Patience is an imaginary letter from from a man who has recently returned from Nigeria to the owner of a small clay walled township bar near the university where they both worked until she left because of political pressures from the military government, and he had to return to UK to look after an ailing father.The letter is written through the course of a single night and in it the Letter Writer tries to deal both with his anxiety about Patience's safety in a time of unrest, and to sort out his own thoughts about his twenty years in Nigeria.
This book won the 2006 Costa (formerly Whitbread) Award
Forthcoming Long Poem