MA Creative Writing alumnus David Ishaya Osu has published a pamphlet of poetry entitled When I’m Eighteen (Words Rhymes & Rhythm, 2020).
When I’m Eighteen is a collection of 18 poems exploring multiple reaches of psyche, place and purpose over time. A collection on an exploratory streak, each poem buzzes through gaps between memories – known and unknown. On this journey, the poet plays and the poem plays without restraint: cycles and bicycle, dreams and rainbow, candles and cake, maths and mangoes. When I’m Eighteen climaxes with a declarative and happy gasp: ‘it was from my mother’s / mouth i first saw a kiss.’
David Ishaya Osu is a poet, memoirist and street photographer. His work has appeared in Magma Poetry, Poetry Wales, The Griffith Review, and The Oxford Review of Books, among numerous others. He is the poetry editor of Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel, and a board member of Babishai Poetry Foundation based in Uganda.
Poet Saddiq Dzukogi has reviewed When I’m Eighteen, saying: ‘David Ishaya Osu wittingly merges personal history with a familial tone and tills their intersection into a breathing ground for the kind of poetry that infuses the reader with the precise measure of the poet’s experiences, with boyish innocence where everything can be a dream and every dream is an experienced reality’.
David has also been interviewed about his new publication, his writing process and inspirations by Africa in Dialogue:
When I’m Eighteen is available for download on the publisher’s website, here:
https://www.wrr.ng/download/when-im-eighteen-david-osu/
