Fathers are the first point of mentorship to their sons, but Vic’Adex’s verses consistently reiterate his desire not to be anything like his father. The rebellion balances on the brink of denial.
THE PENUMBRA OF SOCIO-CULTURAL FAILURES | a CỌ́N-SCÌÒ review of Moonbeam: Anthology of Short Stories by Izang Alexander Haruna
Moonbeam is way beyond that nomenclature of emerging narratives. It is a foregrounding of viable traditional modes and patterns in what bearers of a value system believe about a world that works.
TO PRESERVE, OR (NOT) TO KILL | a CỌ́N-SCÌÒ review of Uzoamaka J. Eze’s Half Open Lid by Godsgift Isaiah
…the suggestion that feminism leads to lesbianism and fosters hostility towards men, or that gender identity can be altered through violence, presents a reductive and problematic view of these concepts.
BETWEEN THE STRANGE AND THE FAMILIAR | a CỌ́N-SCÌÒ review of ʼPemi Agudaʼs Ghostroots by Sima Essien
Moonbeam is way beyond that nomenclature of emerging narratives. It is a foregrounding of viable traditional modes and patterns in what bearers of a value system believe about a world that works.
WHAT DOES LOVE MEAN? | A Review of Uche Uwadinachi’s ‘The Constituency of Your Lips’
In “The Constituency of Your Lips”, love goes further than romantic attraction; it becomes a search for truth, an attempt to, as the author himself puts it “interrogate that fragile space where love and leadership intersect — where the personal meets the political.”
SATIRE AND SEED: THE UNENDING BLOOM OF COLONIALISM | A Review of Tares Oburumu’s ‘Flora’s Love Colony’
The poems are an adventure into the vast world of interracial affairs, producing for their immediacy the obsession with cultural integrity and boundary sensibility. This in itself is not the ultimate denunciation of the interference so addressed; rather, it undergirds the multiple thematic tours from personal to societal concerns.
STUDIOS OF SURVIVAL: A READING OF MOREMI FOLAKE AKANO’S ‘A WOMAN’S STUDIO’ by Soji Cole
Moremi [Folake] Akano's A Woman's Studio is a slim chapbook of short but impactful poems, what one can call poetic vignettes that transform the often overlooked spaces of women's labour...
Reading Impunity As Nigeria’s Truth | a CỌ́N-SCÌÒ review of Faith Ose Ebhodaghe’s ‘Impunity’ by Izang Alexander Haruna
The thing with impunity is that everyone suffers from its existence… Impunity touches everyone in one way or another.
A Palette of Desire | a CỌ́N-SCÌÒ review Lanre Sonde’s ‘Mellexy: Colours Of You’ by Jide Badmus
Sonde’s Mellexy: Colours Of You is a book of utopian love verses and nimble lyrics, something to get lost in while tucked in bed for the night.
In The Hush Between Lines | a CỌ́N-SCÌÒ review of Folake Adebote’s ‘The Ways We Fought’ by Servio Gbaadmosi
One of the quiet triumphs of The Ways We Fought is its sense of Africanity that does not require assertion. It lives in the rhythm of speech, the weight of names, the presence of community that is, at once, protective in some ways, destructive in more, and always complicit.