DisPlace: The Poetry of Nduka Otiono engages actively with a
diasporic world: Otiono is equally at home critiquing petroculture in
Nigeria and in Canada. His work 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Nightmares, and the volume includes previously unpublished new poems.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 contextualizes Otiono's work within the
frame of physical and spiritual mobility, diaspora, and newer critical
frames like Afropolitanism, attending to form as well as his political
engagement. The volume concludes with an interview of the poet by Chris
Dunton that touches on the nature of poetry, language loss, and
diasporic identities.