Three Poems by Ifésinachi Nwàdiké
How We Became Heroes by Ifésinachi Nwàdiké is a brilliant, captivating collection that burns with class fury while also being gentle where it needs to be, especially when the poet speaks of love, friendship, sacrifice, culture, and children. The verse invokes the creative spirit of Okigbo as an illustration of the liberating power of poetry in a failing postcolonial state and evokes revolutionary echoes of the fiery poetry of the civil rights movement through its tone of gore and grimness.
The poems shared here give readers a look into the emotional weight and themes of the collection, and they leave a lasting impression.
Little Boy Selling Ice Cream
(After a little Boy Selling lce Cream by the Gate of University of Ibadan)
Little boy selling ice cream
do you see them?
They who zoom past
in tinted convoys..
Do you look at them
then smile, waving your shriveled hand
in naive excitement?
Open the cooler
see to the next buyer
When you grow
You'll understand
why the elephant is fat
even when the ant has no flesh...
A Patriot Dreams of Murder
bring me their heads, he says,
serve me their heads on Independence Day
those broods of bloody barbaric baboons
through whom afilictions rise a millionth time.
with a rusted plate
smeared with the blood of lost patriots
garnished with hardship, with anguish
serve me heads of pharaohs who soil the rivers with
their lousy leprous legs
serve them with a cold wine of overdue revenge
in a red-hot chalice of choking venom
the patriot dreams of murder—holy murder, for
only a tortoise knows where to bite another tortoise, hence
this supplication: to be served their nutritious skulls
the only thing left to eat.
We Are Writers, Not Sandbags
‘War is not a craft, but poetry is.’
J.O.J. Nwachukwu-Agbada
Tell the men of war that we are writers,
not battlemen for their wars of attrition.
Gifted in the art of weaving, we have no need for guns
if our voices are loud, it is for the masses' freedom.
We are writers, not sandbags
placed as garrisons in their battlefields—as
shields from the bullets of their antagonists.
We are writers, not canon fodders or attack dogs
barking to wall them in the safety of their delusions.
If we run to their patronage
it is for grooming in an art other than warfare.
We need rooms of our own to bloom, to sharpen our teeth
we are writers, not sandbags.
Singer, Actor, Poet, Playwright, Essayist and Novelist, Ifésinachi Nwàdiké was born in Owerri, Nigeria, and holds a Master’s degree in English from University of Ibadan.
He’s the Co-Founder and Chief Editor of Ngiga Review, and administrator of the Ngiga Humour Prize. His debut collection, How Morning Remembers the Night, won the First Runner-up to the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Prize, 2020, and was Longlisted for the inaugural Pan-African Writers Association Poetry Prize, 2022. His essay “The Ludicrousness of Ungodly Things” (Kalahari 2021) was listed in Afrocritik’s Top 20 Remarkable Essays of 2021 by African writers. In 2023, his essay was Longlisted for the Sehvage/E.E. Sule Prize for Literary Criticism. He was a 2018 Fellow of the Ebedi International Writers Residency, and a 2025 Fellow of the inaugural Black Orpheus Exploration Fellowship.
Some of his poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in IHRAM
Press, Maroko, Nokoko (Issues 8 & 10), Brittle Paper, Ake Literary
Review, Kalahari Review, Olongo Africa, Lunaris Review, Black Boy Review, Libretto, BookArt Ville, and elsewhere.
How We Became Heroes is published by Noirledge Publishing. Read more via the publisher or purchase a copy from Roving Heights Bookstore below.
