Nigerian poet Adedayo Agarau’s debut full-length poetry collection called The Years of Blood will be coming out from Fordham University Press this September — and is currently available to pre-order!

The collection has been praised for the “stunning balance between verbal density, formal experimentation, and intensity of content” by celebrated Nigerian poet and critic Niyi Osundare. From a press release:

The Years of Blood unflinchingly confronts Nigeria’s history of ritual killings, kidnapping dens, and child abductions—horrific realities that have persisted from the pre-democratic era into the present day. Agarau’s poems document how political instability and corruption enabled these atrocities, while personal poems like “Salt water” and “Sọ́kà” (named after a notorious kidnapping den discovered in Ibadan) detail the trauma of communities where children simply vanished. The collection also explores the spiritual and economic motivations behind these sacrifices, where human body parts were harvested for rituals meant to bring wealth and power. Through both concrete imagery and surreal landscapes, Agarau bears witness to these crimes while examining how a society processes—or fails to process—such profound violations.

The striking cover was designed by acclaimed Nigerian abstract photographer Ololade Olawale. The liminality of the presence of the shrouded form speaks to the collection’s themes of memory, disappearance, and forgetting.

Adding to its accolades, the manuscript was selected by Elisabeth Frost and JoAnne McFarland for the Poetic Justice Institute Editor’s Prize for a BIPOC Writer. The Poetic Justice Institute is dedicated to publishing extraordinary poetry by BIPOC writers whose work contributes to contemporary literary conversations while challenging readers to engage with important social, political, and cultural issues.

Beyond its artistic merit, The Years of Blood is essential reading for anyone engaged with African literature, postcolonial studies, or the complex interplay between personal and political histories in global writing. With its uncompromising exploration of difficult themes, the volume stands as a vital contribution to ongoing conversations around trauma, grief, loss, absence, migration, solitude, and African spiritual traditions.

Adedayo Agarau is a is a Wallace Stegner Fellow ’25, a Cave Canem Fellow and a 2024 Ruth Lilly-Rosenberg Fellowship finalist. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Agbowó Magazine: A Journal of African Literature and Art and a Poetry Reviews Editor for The Rumpus. He is the author of the chapbooks Origin of Name (African Poetry Book Fund, 2020) and The Arrival of Rain (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2020).

The Years of Blood will publish on September 2, 2025. Pre-order the collection here!