DisPlace

Nduka Otiono is an Associate Professor of African Studies and English at Carleton University in Ottawa. Formerly a journalist and General Secretary of the Association of Nigerian Authors, his publications include two poetry books and a collection of short stories, The Night Hides with a Knife, winner of the ANA/Spectrum Prize for fiction.Peter Midgley is an independent scholar, writer, and editor. He is the author twelve books for children and adults, including three volumes of poetry. His latest book of poetry, let us not think of them as barbarians, was shortlisted for the Writers' Guild of Alberta's Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry.

DisPlace is the contradictory being of Nduka Otiono: He’s “here” in Canada, but he’s also a dissident resident of Nigeria. He exists in the self-appointed Shangri-La that is the once-boastfully slaveholding Americas; but he insists on remaining the anointed exorcist of an Africa still decadent with bullets, with “militicians,” who play baboons rather than messiahs.—George Elliott Clarke, Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada, 2016-17 The most personal of Otiono’s poems are mostly elegiac, with death pawing at the door, and the language swaying with a new, lithe spring to it and the strength one associates with fine, high-tensile wire. The poet’s imagistic reflections on life are at once sonorous, contemplative, bold, and defiant." - Chris Dunton, Professor of Literature in English and former Dean of The Faculty of Humanities at The National University of Lesotho, Roma