{"product_id":"the-years-of-blood-2","title":"The Years of Blood","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the 2023-24 Poetic Justice Institute Editors Prize for a BIPOC Writer\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nISELE MAGAZINE | EDITOR'S CHOICE: 25 MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2025\u003cbr\u003e\n THE MODACULTURE | 10 ANTICIPATED AFRICAN BOOKS OF 2025\u003cbr\u003e\n OPEN COUNTRY MAGAZINE | ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2025\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nIn this unflinching debut collection, Adedayo Agarau confronts the harrowing reality of ritual killings and child abductions that have terrorized Nigeria from the turbulent pre-democratic era to the present day. Set against the backdrop of rural Ibadan, \u003ci\u003eThe Years of Blood\u003c\/i\u003e plunges readers into the depths of collective trauma where \"memory forsakes the body at the point where fear fills the body like air.\"\u003cbr\u003e\nThese poems bear witness to unspeakable atrocities through dreamlike landscapes and surreal imagery that resist rational explanation. Memory is as vital as it is ungraspable. As the painful poem \"the abduction\" puts it, \"memory forsakes the body at the point where fear fills the body like air.\" Or, in \"Lilac,\" where \"the debris of memory \/ becomes the fog before you.\" Agarau's lyrical language—at once rich and broken—captures both the violence witnessed and the guilt of survival through repetitions of words, phrases, and motifs.\u003cbr\u003e\nAs both survivor and émigré to the U.S., Agarau explores \"the weight of disappearance [that] hangs heavy over memory,\" the ongoing trauma that cannot be shed, and the search for healing across continents. His poems attempt to wrest language out of terror's domain, asking: \"How many ways can the poet craft an elegy?\"\u003cbr\u003e\nAbove and beyond its art, \u003ci\u003eThe Years of Blood\u003c\/i\u003e is essential reading for those interested in African literature, postcolonial studies, and the intersection of personal and political history and global literature. In its unyielding approach to its subject matter, this volume is a crucial interlocutor to conversations on trauma, grief, loss, absence, migration, loneliness, and African spiritualism.\u003cbr\u003e\nFor readers of Ilya Kaminsky, Safia Elhillo, Ocean Vuong, and Claudia Rankine, this collection speaks to both specific cultural realities and universal human experiences through poetry that refuses easy consolation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n","brand":"Adedayo Agarau","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55034909622652,"sku":"9781531511616","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0251\/4980\/0541\/files\/9781531511616.jpg?v=1742477145","url":"https:\/\/combined-academic.myshopify.com\/products\/the-years-of-blood-2","provider":"Combined Academic Publishers - Mare Nostrum Group","version":"1.0","type":"link"}