What happens when children witness injustices that wrench innocence from their souls?
This is what I pondered during my conversation with Adedayo Agarau in the latest episode of the podcast. Adedayo Agarau is the author of The Years of Blood, a poetry collection that explores trauma, memory, anxiety, and immigration.
We talked about living in Ibadan and the kind of things we heard of and saw as kids. Terrible stories that made you quiver in your bed and suspicious of the world.
If you grew up in Nigeria in the eighties and early nineties, you probably heard them too.
“Don’t take sweets from your friends, or you will be initiated into witchcraft in the dead of night.”
“Don’t pick up money that isn’t yours. You will turn into a tuber of yam.”
“A man’s private part was touched by a random stranger, and now his manhood is missing.”
You probably saw it on the news, too.
“Man arrested with severed head in his boot.”
“Dead woman found in the forest with missing private parts.”
When I asked Adedayo why he dwelt on these painful and disturbing subjects, he teared up.
For Adedayo, these were not faraway stories; this type of news was close to home. His own friend, Taofiq, was abducted and killed, his school bag lying nearby. “We were in love with the same girl,” he said, “And it felt like I won when he left.”
Worse still, Adedayo himself was abducted, but he was let go. He has no memory of what transpired throughout.
Ritual killings in Nigeria, particularly the ones that involve children, are an injustice that is hardly given the right attention to avoid future occurrences. Frustrated by the lack of emergency on ritual killings and abductions, Adedayo wanted to write a book that gave voice to these horrors.
You will hear us laugh from time to time during this episode, but make no mistake, our laughter was not from gladness. It is the kind of laughter that erupts when pain is too heavy, and something must shift it.
Years later, when Adedayo found himself in another country, it was finally time to confront the past. Adedayo shares about struggling with anxiety and walking long distances in the snow because he had to distract himself.
We talked about the kind of loneliness he felt being so far away from home to pursue his dreams and how grateful he was to access mental health support abroad—a thing he did not quite enjoy in Nigeria.
“Children who had depression were [said] to have evil spirits,” he said.
Away from the memories of the past, we also talked about growing up in Ibadan, Adedayo’s beginnings as a writer, and the writers’ group on 2go that became the foundation of his writing career. Today, he’s 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.
Adedayo’s poetry weaves Yoruba and English wonderfully, a feat that few can achieve. When I asked him about the beauty of language and rhythm in his poetry, he shared a bit of his family history: Adedayo’s grandfather started the apala band with popular apala singer Haruna Ishola.
This was quite the episode with Adedayo, and I was so glad to hear him say at the end that he was excited to be on a podcast where the host understood him.
I invite you to listen to our conversation and let me know your thoughts on it. To find out more about Adedayo’s book and the podcast, head over to Journey of the Art.
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