All That Refuses to Die

Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets

All that Refuses to Die is a poetry collection that interrogates the present conditions of Africans through a historical lens. Michael Imossan moves into historical spaces such as museums and sites of enslavement, touching artifacts that hold meaning, and asking, Where was Africa? Where is Africa now? And what has changed? The Biafran War that claimed three million lives, though declared over, still has its lingering effect on Nigeria and Nigerians. Congo, though free of King Leopold and the exploitation of cotton, is still not free of other kinds of exploitation, nor is Uganda. Though the slave trade has ended, African bodies are still found in the Sahara Desert and in the Atlantic Ocean.

All that Refuses to Die is a collection that brims with stories and memories that evoke as well as provoke. As he moves through historical places, the poet compares the past with the present and finds that nothing has really changed.

Michael Imossan is a Nigerian poet of Ibibio origin. He is curator of the poetry column for Nigerian NewsDirect, poetry editor for the Chestnut Review, and the author of the award-winning chapbook For the Love of Country and Memory. Imossan’s second chapbook, The Smell of Absence, was selected for inclusion in Kumi Na Moja: New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set. He is a recipient of a PEN International writers’ grant. Kwame Dawes is a professor of literary arts at Brown University and the director and series editor of the African Poetry Book Fund.