Toyin Adewale

Toyin Adewale Poems

Toyin Adewale Biography

Toyin Adewale was born in Ibadan, Nigeria, also the birthplace of Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka. Nigeria is a country where the average citizen would spend a quarter of his monthly earnings to buy a book, and where only ten percent of the population read any books at all. Toyin Adewale had the good fortune to be born into an educated family which could afford to send her to a secondary school, where she learnt English as a second language next to her native Yoruba. After secondary school she went on to study English literature at Lagos University. Toyin Adewale began writing poetry while still in her teens. In 1995 she published her first collection, Naked Testimonies, which was very well received and earned her an honourable mention from the Association of Nigerian Authors. She has published two books in German translation: Die Aromaforscherin (1998) and Flackerende Kerzen (1999). She is the founder and president of the Women Writers of Nigeria Organization (WRITA), which works to improve the position of women writers in her country.)

The Best Poem Of Toyin Adewale

Olayimika

Song of a first born daughter
to the beats of gangan

I am the first fruit of your loins.
Seasoned with grace.
Seasoned with salt.
I stride to drumbeats.
Flywhisks attend my hands.
Like anklets of brass, joy encircles.

I am the consolation,
born for the day of affliction.
I am the vigour,
the virgin seed,
roosting under coverlets of aso-oke.

Down the winding road,
I nurture the handkerchiefs
for champions who cry...
Behold the daughter,
your blessed harvest.
Your basket of plump yams.
Your scented one.

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