Colgate University honours Nigerian poet, Adesina

Colgate University, New York, has honoured Unites States-based Nigerian poet and professor of poetry, Gbenga Adesina, by hosting him for a reading and celebration of his works.

The event, which was hosted by Prof. Jennifer Brice, an award-winning writer and essayist and Prof. Peter Balakian, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and New York Times best-selling author, had Balakian, described Adesina as “one of the most compelling young voices of his generation, whose work spans continents in scope and a masterful teacher”.

Adesina, who won the Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship in the 2019-2020 academic session, was selected out of over 1,000 applications to complete the first book and serve as a visiting professor in the English department.

According to Adesina: “My time in this historic American institution will always stay with me. My experience teaching a diverse body of students, who came from every part of the country and the world was an education for me. I also learned a great deal from my mentors, who were some of the best minds and writers in the world.”

At the event, the renowned young poet read from his bodywork: ‘I Carried My Father Across the Sea’, which was part of his long sequence writing that won the narrative prize and his poem, ‘Glory’, which was originally published in Academy of American Poets’s website and has been translated into over 10 languages and syndicated across major platforms in the United States, Europe, and Canada.

Adesina is a renowned poet, essayist, and a PhD candidate at Florida State University. He has a Master’s in Fine Arts (in poetry) from the prestigious New York University (NYU). In 2016, he became the first Nigerian to win the Brunel International Poetry Prize and the first African based on the continent to win the prize. That same year, his poem was published in the New York Times and syndicated in several magazines and platforms. Three years later, he became the 2019-2020 Olive B. O’Connor Poetry Fellow at Colgate University.

He won the Narrative Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, in 2020, for his poem, ‘Across the Sea: A Sequence’. Past winners of the prize have gone ahead to win Pulitzer Prizes, Guggenheim Fellowships, and the MacArthur Genius Grant.

That same year, Adesina was a lead performer in the literary series, ‘Boundless: Africa hosted by the Kennedy Centre for Performing Arts in Washington DC. He featured alongside renowned African writers such as Ella Wakatama, Helon Habila, Jenifer Makumbi, Femi Osofisan, and the Booker Prize-winning novelist, Ben Okri.

His work has been published in Harvard Review, Prairie Schooner, Yale Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, the New York Times and elsewhere.