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Winner of the 2023 Cave Canem Poetry Prize

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9780822967309

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The Cave Canem Prize celebrates the richness of Black culture and the depth of our shared experience. Ajibola Tolase exemplifies the essence of creativity and resilience, using his poetry to shed light on the beauty and complexity of the Black experience.--Lynne Thompson, Cave Canem Prize judge, Los Angeles poet laureate, and author of Fretwork 'Imagine / the land without the conflicts, ' writes Ajibola Tolase in his blazing debut, 2000 Blacks. From Nigeria to America, Tolase explores the surrealness that arises from living in repressive spaces. Yet despite the violence embedded in systems of power, 'the native word for burn is the same as dance.' This is a necessary poetry that leaves no quarter unsinged, a revelation in its willingness to dwell in the unimaginable.--Quan Barry, author of Auction Yes, there is a villanelle and sonnets flanked by abcedarians, but it's the percussive vernacular that guides me through Ajibola Tolase's 2000 Blacks. It's the revelrous, 'If everyone celebrated / what didn't kill them, we can pretend / to be immortals' and the irreverent 'I would have hugged him / until he felt shame' that sings to me. Be it the tongue's many failings, absence, migration, Tolase has created a world I'll trumpet for years to come.--Clemonce Heard, author of Tragic City

"""'Imagine / the land without the conflicts, ' writes Ajibola Tolase in his blazing debut, 2,000 Blacks. From Nigeria to America, Tolase explores the surrealness that arises from living in repressive spaces. Yet despite the violence embedded in systems of power, 'the native word for burn is the same as dance.' This is a necessary poetry that leaves no quarter unsinged, a revelation in its willingness to dwell in the unimaginable."" --Quan Barry, author of Auction ""The Cave Canem Prize celebrates the richness of Black culture and the depth of our shared experience. Ajibola Tolase exemplifies the essence of creativity and resilience, using his poetry to shed light on the beauty and complexity of the Black experience."" --Lynne Thompson, Cave Canem Prize judge, Los Angeles poet laureate, and author of Fretwork"

Author Information

Ajibola Tolase is a Nigerian poet and essayist. His writing has appeared in LitHub, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry, and elsewhere. He is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and has received a creative writing grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation. He is the 2023-2024 Olive B. O'Connor Fellow in Poetry at Colgate University and graduated from the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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