Desertion by Abdulrazak Gurnah Is a Beautiful Book Olumide Holloway (King Olulu) · March 2026 It’s funny that I think of it as being beautiful given some of the tragic events therein. The book’s main themes seem to be love, tradition, belonging, and cruelty. The book is history repeating itself in different generations because every […]
On Saturday, January 31st, Kinora Restaurant by the Assembly in Ogbomoso hosted the first-ever slam poetry competition in the city. Branded the Motoni Olodun Slam, the event marked the 4th anniversary of the rebirth of Open Mic Ogbomoso, a community that has steadily grown from casual expression into a more intentional creative space. Hosted by […]
Is the glass half full or half empty? You’ve likely encountered this as a personality test. Optimists see possibilities. Pessimists see lack. But that framing can be too rudimentary. Before deciding how to describe the glass, especially if we’re going to drink from it, we should ask a more important question: what’s inside it? If […]
Over the past decade, I have read poems that were, in many ways, memoirs of everyday people. Not memoirs in the traditional sense, but little records of ordinary life: poems about growing up, falling in love, losing someone, being broke, leaving home, finding faith, questioning God, navigating friendship, surviving heartbreak, watching a country change. Some […]
OPEN MIC OGBOMOSO · VOLUME I · YEAR FOUR The Room, Gathered into a Book EWÌ ’MOSHO is the first official anthology from Open Mic Ogbomoso. It gathers writing that first lived before an audience: poems spoken aloud, carried through the room and preserved beyond a single performance. 24 poems Selected for the 2026 Reader […]
Four years ago, I was out of a job and had just relocated from Maiduguri to Ogbomoso. It was a difficult season. In the middle of that uncertainty, I returned to spoken word poetry, something that has steadied me in my darkest moments. Through Vic’Adex Concepts and Aesthetic Resources, I scraped together Open Mic Ogbomoso. […]
Young Vic’Adex, 2009 There are parts of my childhood I can only understand backwards. At fifteen, understanding wasn’t available to me. Only rebellion. I had lived lines like, “I was 13 when I chose death over my father.” I meant it. Everywhere I turned, people insisted that honouring my father and mother was the secret […]
On Hilda Baci’s Jollof world record, a viral post mocked Nigerians: while other countries were winning Nobel Prizes, it claimed, Nigerians were “cooking rice.” On the surface, it sounded like clever social critique. Look closer, and it was a lazy contrast that reduced a country of 220 million into a caricature. The Illusion of Nobel Parity […]
“Grant me chastity and self-control — but not yet.” — Saint Augustine, Confessions Tweet There are books that tell you what a man feels, and there are books that tell you what a man believes about himself when no one is looking. Poetry Has All My Pain belongs firmly to the latter. It is not simply […]