82nd Division (Paperback or Softback)

Selected by acclaimed poet/novelist Colin Channer for the National Poetry Series, 82nd Division is a lustrous love song to the author’s native Nigeria

THE POEMS IN 82ND DIVISION, written in various forms including the villanelle, sonnet, blues poem, duplex, ode, and dramatic monologue, among many others, are collectively a love song to the author’s native Nigeria―a former British colony. In the book, whose title poem chronicles the lives of West African soldiers who fought alongside the British in World War II, Aderibigbe examines his homeland’s colonized past with brutal clarity and striking musicality, and considers how this past continues to shape every facet of his life and contemporary Nigerian life―be it the holidays that are celebrated, the preferred language of interaction among peers and friends, how a mother expresses love to her child, or the type of movies and snacks consumed.

Beyond its thematic unity, lustrous language, and formal virtuosity, this sparkling collection is tied together by Aderibigbe’s graceful exploration of the humanity of the people, landscape, and histories that populate the book’s pages.

D.M. ADERIBIGBE was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria. He is the author of How the End First Showed, winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry. He has received fellowships and scholarships from the Mississippi Arts Commission, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the James Merrill House, Provincetown’s Fine Arts Work Center, Art Omi/Ledig House, Ucross Foundation, Jentel Foundation, and Boston University. His poems have appeared in Tatu: New-Generation African Poets, a Chapbook Box Set, the Atlantic, the Nation, Ploughshares, the Southern Review, and New England Review, among others.