Set for release on 2nd September 2025, The Years of Blood delves into the haunting realities of ritual killings, child abductions, and the fragile nature of memory in Nigeria.
By Emmanuel ‘Waziri’ Okoro
Fordham University Press has announced the forthcoming release of The Years of Blood, the debut full-length poetry collection by acclaimed Nigerian poet, Adedayo Agarau. Set for release on 2nd September 2025, the collection delves into the haunting realities of ritual killings, child abductions, and the fragile nature of memory in Nigeria.
The collection’s striking cover, designed by renowned Nigerian abstract photographer, Ololade Olawale, features a spectral figure draped in white fabric against a sepia-toned gradient. This ghostly image, neither fully present nor absent, serves as a powerful visual metaphor for the themes Adedayo Agarau explores: the weight of disappearance, the liminal space between remembrance and forgetting, and the enduring scars of collective trauma.
Selected by Elisabeth Frost and JoAnne McFarland for the Poetic Justice Institute Editor’s Prize for a BIPOC Writer, The Years of Blood has already garnered significant acclaim. Celebrated Nigerian poet, Niyi Osundare, describes the collection as “chilling and surreal”, praising its ability to balance “verbal density, formal experimentation, and intensity of content”.
Agarau’s work unflinchingly confronts Nigeria’s history of ritual killings and kidnapping dens, which have persisted from the pre-democratic era into the present day. Through dreamlike imagery and fragmented, repetitive language, the collection examines how political instability and corruption have enabled these atrocities.
Poems like “Salt water” and “Sọ́kà” (named after a notorious kidnapping den discovered in Ibadan) detail the trauma of communities where children vanished without a trace. Adedayo Agarau also explores the spiritual and economic motivations behind these crimes, where human body parts were harvested for rituals meant to bring wealth and power.
As one poem poignantly states, “Memory forsakes the body at the point where fear fills the body like air”. This sentiment is visually echoed in the cover’s ghostly figure, which embodies both presence and absence, reflecting the collection’s exploration of how societies process—or fail to process—profound violations.
Adedayo Agarau is a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, a Cave Canem Fellow, and a 2024 Ruth Lilly-Rosenberg Fellowship finalist.
He is the author of the chapbooks, Origin of Name (African Poetry Book Fund, 2020) and The Arrival of Rain (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2020). Recently, Agarau was selected for the prestigious 2025 Poets & Writers Get the Word Out Program, a publicity incubator that supports early-career writers with their debut or second major book publications.
The Years of Blood is now available for pre-order at Fordham University Press.