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The Years of Blood
Winner of the 2023-24 Poetic Justice Institute Editors Prize for a BIPOC Writer
ISELE MAGAZINE | EDITOR'S 25 MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2025
THE MODACULTURE | 10 ANTICIPATED AFRICAN BOOKS OF 2025
OPEN COUNTRY MAGAZINE | ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2025
In this unflinching debut collection, Adedayo Agarau confronts the harrowing reality of ritual killings and child abductions that have terrorized Nigeria from the turbulent pre-democratic era to the present day. Set against the backdrop of rural Ibadan, The Years of Blood plunges readers into the depths of collective trauma where “memory forsakes the body at the point where fear fills the body like air.”
These poems bear witness to unspeakable atrocities through dreamlike landscapes and surreal imagery that resist rational explanation. Memory is as vital as it is ungraspable. As the painful poem “the abduction” puts it, “memory forsakes the body at the point where fear fills the body like air.” Or, in “Lilac,” where “the debris of memory / becomes the fog before you.” Agarau’s lyrical language—at once rich and broken—captures both the violence witnessed and the guilt of survival through repetitions of words, phrases, and motifs.
As both survivor and émigré to the US, Agarau explores “the weight of disappearance [that] hangs heavy over memory,” the ongoing trauma that cannot be shed, and the search for healing across continents. His poems attempt to wrest language out of terror’s domain, “How many ways can the poet craft an elegy?”
Above and beyond its art, The Years of Blood is essential reading for those interested in African literature, postcolonial studies, and the intersection of personal and political history and global literature. In its unyielding approach to its subject matter, this volume is a crucial interlocutor to conversations on trauma, grief, loss, absence, migration, loneliness, and African spiritualism.
For readers of Ilya Kaminsky, Safia Elhillo, Ocean Vuong, and Claudia Rankine, this collection speaks to both specific cultural realities and universal human experiences through poetry that refuses easy consolation.
ISELE MAGAZINE | EDITOR'S 25 MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2025
THE MODACULTURE | 10 ANTICIPATED AFRICAN BOOKS OF 2025
OPEN COUNTRY MAGAZINE | ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2025
In this unflinching debut collection, Adedayo Agarau confronts the harrowing reality of ritual killings and child abductions that have terrorized Nigeria from the turbulent pre-democratic era to the present day. Set against the backdrop of rural Ibadan, The Years of Blood plunges readers into the depths of collective trauma where “memory forsakes the body at the point where fear fills the body like air.”
These poems bear witness to unspeakable atrocities through dreamlike landscapes and surreal imagery that resist rational explanation. Memory is as vital as it is ungraspable. As the painful poem “the abduction” puts it, “memory forsakes the body at the point where fear fills the body like air.” Or, in “Lilac,” where “the debris of memory / becomes the fog before you.” Agarau’s lyrical language—at once rich and broken—captures both the violence witnessed and the guilt of survival through repetitions of words, phrases, and motifs.
As both survivor and émigré to the US, Agarau explores “the weight of disappearance [that] hangs heavy over memory,” the ongoing trauma that cannot be shed, and the search for healing across continents. His poems attempt to wrest language out of terror’s domain, “How many ways can the poet craft an elegy?”
Above and beyond its art, The Years of Blood is essential reading for those interested in African literature, postcolonial studies, and the intersection of personal and political history and global literature. In its unyielding approach to its subject matter, this volume is a crucial interlocutor to conversations on trauma, grief, loss, absence, migration, loneliness, and African spiritualism.
For readers of Ilya Kaminsky, Safia Elhillo, Ocean Vuong, and Claudia Rankine, this collection speaks to both specific cultural realities and universal human experiences through poetry that refuses easy consolation.
97 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 2, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 5 reviews
February 7, 2026
From the context clues, it would appear that the blood spilled in the poems was spilled by the Mosque going members of the author's family. Certainly the tragedy of dead Christians is not well served here.
The poem's title Portent certainly brought home the importance of destruction, but who is perpetrating this violence.
This was a little gem
...
Boys that don't listen. Boys who listen.
Boys who revolt. B0ys who leave home.
The poem's title Portent certainly brought home the importance of destruction, but who is perpetrating this violence.
This was a little gem
...
Boys that don't listen. Boys who listen.
Boys who revolt. B0ys who leave home.
June 24, 2025
"1. where will all fear go when god takes over the city? /
2. whose gratitude will drive the lambs into the swine? /
3. what am i without the dream where I am gasping for air?"
Per usual, masterful work by Adedayo. It's always a gift to read his work and the unapologetic nature of it--forces you to look and sit with and surrender to a work devastating in both content and craftsmanship.
2. whose gratitude will drive the lambs into the swine? /
3. what am i without the dream where I am gasping for air?"
Per usual, masterful work by Adedayo. It's always a gift to read his work and the unapologetic nature of it--forces you to look and sit with and surrender to a work devastating in both content and craftsmanship.
June 28, 2025
sad and bloody but well executed
April 1, 2026
I actually love the word play if anything and the writing is enthralling. A nice collection of poems.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 5 reviews