The Naming

The Naming explores the movements, excesses, and extremes of existing as a postmodern individual, connecting these experiences to ancestry. The poems in this collection examine the various ways one remains tied to their ancestors by reimagining memories, history, homesteads, migration, and the intersections of the past, present, and possible futures. Through this exploration, the collection seeks to rebuild a world that doesn’t merely replicate realities but reinvents, enshrines, and restories them.

Chinụa Ezenwa-Ọhaeto’s poems offer a vital contribution to African cultural studies through their focus on Igbo heritage and ancestry.

Chinụa Ezenwa-Ọhaeto is from Ishiowerre, Owerri-Nkworji, in Nkwerre, Imo state, Nigeria. He is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the author of the chapbook The Teenager Who Became My Mother. His work has won multiple awards and has appeared in the Massachusetts Review, Frontier Poetry, Palette Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Malahat Review, Lolwe, Southword Magazine, Vallum, Mud Season Review, LitMag, Colorado Review, Salamander, Oxford Poetry, and the Republic.