Yusuf Adamu’s third collection of poems, his first since Landscapes of Reality (2008), shows him working on a new territory that extends from the politics of language to the question of geography in poetic imagination. Grand, great, as graceful as they are grounded, these poems seem intent on evincing a take on everything: from the veracity and virtue of English language to geopolitics and gender. At the centre of the book’s concern is a kind of a displaced and subtle “elegy” for Nigeria’s miscarried dream and hope, and that elegiac tone permeates the whole book. As W. H. Auden would say: a born poet always looks absolutely natural.
“Yusuf Adamu is indeed a true poet in the mould of Wordsworth and Walcott. Poem after poem, he has an identifying personal tone, a sort of Muse-tainted uniqueness which, in a way, is almost independent of what it portends. The magnitude of his achievement in this collection appears more stunning. They can Speak English quite easily proves why Yusuf Adamu may well have been the most original poet of his generation. Every discerning reader who reads the poems collected here will be delighted by his linguistic subtleties, for he follows the lead of both Brand and Brutus, dazzling in many of the display of imageries that they partake in”.
Ismail Bala
Poet, Critic and Lecturer
Department of English and French, Bayero University Kano, Nigeria
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