Agarau’s The Years of Blood poetry collection garners high praise

Nigerian poet Niyi Osundare hails Adedayo Agarau’s The Years of Blood, a searing poetry collection confronting ritual killings and child abductions in Nigeria. — Adedayo Agarau

Nigerian poet Niyi Osundare has praised The Years of Blood, the debut full-length poetry collection by Adedayo Agarau, describing it as a haunting and powerful work that captures the anguish of a nation’s trauma.

“In the haunting horrorscape of these poems, crying bones usurp the streets; ‘days of vanishing’ darken into nights of wrenching anguish,” Osundare said, heralding the collection’s release by Fordham University Press.

The collection, which won the Poetic Justice Institute Editor’s Prize for a BIPOC Writer, is an unflinching exploration of ritual killings, child abductions, and the lingering shadows of Nigeria’s past. Its themes of disappearance, memory, and collective grief are reinforced by its striking cover, designed by acclaimed Nigerian abstract photographer Ololade Olawale. The image—a spectral figure shrouded in white fabric—mirrors the liminal spaces between presence and absence that Agarau’s poetry inhabits.

Osundare’s endorsement of the collection underscores its literary significance, particularly in its thematic connections to his own body of work documenting Nigeria’s socio-political landscape. He describes Agarau’s poems as “chilling and surreal” yet masterfully crafted, striking a balance between formal experimentation and emotional intensity.

Agarau’s work has also drawn acclaim from leading poets. Aracelis Girmay, author of the black maria, praises his ability to weave the personal and the historical into a singular, urgent voice. Remica Bingham-Risher highlights the poet’s capacity to find beauty amidst devastation:

Adedayo Agarau is a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and has been recognised as a 2024 Ruth Lilly-Rosenberg Fellowship finalist.

“Evil is a question for God, and beauty emerges despite what the politicians have ruined… In this harrowing collection, Agarau shapes and sifts through shadow until light treads steadily home.”

Michael Aderibigbe describes Agarau as “a visionary… invested in bringing to mind the beauty and brutality of his community.”

Through fragmented language and dreamlike imagery, The Years of Blood examines how memory fractures under the weight of trauma. As one poem states, “Memory forsakes the body at the point where fear fills the body like air.” The collection chronicles Nigeria’s long history of ritual killings and abductions, with poems like Salt Water and Sọ́kà—named after a notorious kidnapping den discovered in Ibadan—giving voice to the silenced victims of these atrocities.

The Years of Blood is available for pre-order from Fordham University Press.

Beyond bearing witness to historical violence, Agarau interrogates the political and economic forces that enabled these crimes. He explores how human body parts were harvested for rituals believed to bring wealth and power, exposing the complicity of political elites who profited from such horrors. His poetry does not merely document these crimes but forces a reckoning with their legacy.

Agarau, a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a Cave Canem Fellow, has been recognised as a 2024 Ruth Lilly-Rosenberg Fellowship finalist. His previous works include Origin of Name (African Poetry Book Fund, 2020) and The Arrival of Rain (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2020). Recently, he was selected for the 2025 Poets & Writers Get the Word Out Program, a prestigious incubator supporting emerging voices in contemporary literature.

The Years of Blood is available for pre-order from Fordham University Press and will be released on 2 September 2025.