Overview

Covering more than five hundred years of cultural transformation, Bakandamiya: An Elegy is a book-length epic poem set in Northern Nigeria. The poem moves from passages of mythic power to elegant lyricism with remarkable skill, subverting the legend of Bayajidda, a prince from Baghdad whose arrival reshaped the outlook of the Hausas, a Native ethnic group in West Africa. Told in part from a Bori spirit’s point of view and in part through personal lyrics, part prayer and part praise song, Bakandamiya decries the loss of culture and spirituality due to colonization from both the West and the East. Even as it subverts myths and popular beliefs and addresses some of the events that led to the Nigerian civil war, it tackles the lingering question of nationhood. In this work of lyric and poetic ambition, Saddiq Dzukogi blends the personal with the mythical, expanding the griot tradition of Bakandamiya, a poetic form from Northern Nigeria popularized by Mamman Shata. Here the form travels from orature to contemporary poetics for the first time, taking its place at the vanguard of contemporary poetry.  

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9781496244277

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Reviews

“Saddiq Dzukogi’s first book was one of my favorite debuts in quite some time, so I was wondering what might come next. Bakandamiya does not disappoint—this work is incredible in how it blends epic breath and lyric impulse, a timeless meditation . . . that knows ‘night is the truce between the battles of spirits.’ A conversation with sources as various as the Quran and Dante, Eliot and Gibran, here is a choral gathering of the tribes that’s unafraid to reach for the truth. . . . This is a voice worth listening to.”—Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic

“Saddiq Dzukogi’s first book was one of my favorite debuts in quite some time, so I was wondering what might come next. Bakandamiya does not disappoint—this work is incredible in how it blends epic breath and lyric impulse, a timeless meditation . . . that knows ‘night is the truce between the battles of spirits.’ A conversation with sources as various as the Qur’an and Dante, Eliot and Gibran, here is a choral gathering of the tribes that’s unafraid to reach for the truth. . . . This is a voice worth listening to.”—Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic

Author Information

Saddiq Dzukogi is a Nigerian poet and assistant professor of English at Mississippi State University. He is the author of Your Crib, My Qibla (Nebraska, 2021), winner of the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry and the Julie Suk Award and shortlisted for the Nigeria Prize for Literature. His poems have appeared in the Poetry Magazine, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Narrative Magazine, Ploughshares, Guernica Magazine, Poetry London, Best American Experimental Writing Anthology, and Cincinnati Review. He has received fellowships from the Nebraska Arts Council, Mississippi Arts Commission, and Cave Canem.  

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