Nigerian poet, Abu Bakr Sadiq has revealed the cover of his poetry book, Leaked Footages, which won the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets 2023.
Leaked Footages carries urgent subjects, ranging from death to disappearance to grief to memory. Not only do the poems fulfil the tradition of witnessing, often manifested in contemporary poets such as Garous Abdolmalekian and Ilya Kaminsky, but they extend that tradition by the medium through which they witness: the technical and the technological. Abu Bakr describes the exploration of northern Nigeria in a speculative poetry, a country ravaged by terrorism and the consequences of war, as well as the effects of these on those who survive.
Abu Bakr Sadiq is a Nigerian poet born and raised in Minna. He is an undergraduate student at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. He won the 2022 IGNYTE award for Best Speculative Poetry, 2023 Sillerman First Book Prize, and was a finalist for the 2023 Evaristo Prize for African Poetry. His work has been published in Boston Review, The Fiddlehead, Mizna, Fiyah, Palette Poetry, Uncanny Magazine, Augur Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, and elsewhere.
Leaked Footages will be published by the University of Nebraska Press in November 2024, with a foreward by newly appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica, Kwame Dawes.
The University of Nebraska Press, founded in 1941, is the largest university press between Chicago and California. It publishes scholarly and general-interest books (with more than 5,000 titles in print and an additional 150 new titles released each year) and journals (with more than 30 different journals published each year) in topics ranging from anthropology and literary criticism to history and sports.
We look forward to uncovering the chapters of Leaked Footages, Abu Bakr!
Bakare Oluwatobiloba
I write to educate, motivate and define history with literature. Just being me!
