Dami Ajayi’s poetry is not just intriguing, it’s deeply emotional. His body of work, which we can confidently label as ‘poetry’, is substantial. With three poetry collections under his belt, the most recent being Affection & Other Accidents, Ajayi has delved into his emotional reservoir like never before, drawing deeply from his previous works.

Writer Ayodele Arigbabu hailed his debut collection Clinical Blues as a potential classic, a sentiment echoed by its shortlisting for the inaugural Melita Hume Prize. This was just the beginning of a string of literary accolades for Ajayi. Clinical Blues was longlisted for the Wole Soyinka Prize for African Literature and won the first runner-up for the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Prize in 2015, cementing Ajayi’s place in the literary world.

Clinical Blues has recently been reprinted after being out of print for a time, though it never faded from our collective imagination. It remains a significant milestone in the landscape of contemporary Nigerian poetry. Ajayi’s poems are known for their exquisite lyricism, mischievous playfulness and bold exploration of masculine vulnerability.

His second collection, A Woman’s Body is a Country, explores the life of a roving Lagos voyeur. Through lyrical poems, he meditates on dreams, bodies, passionate lovers, and soulful songs. In sparse poetry, it reincarnated Sango, the protagonist of Cyprian Ekwensi’s novel People of the City. In the book’s title poem, Ajayi writes, “You play me your favourite song/because love is assimilation.” He compares a phallic erection to patriotism against the backdrop of Cuba’s Buena Vista Social Club classic song, “Chan Chan.” Little wonder writer and culture critic IfeOluwa Nihinola describes A Woman’s Body as  “the exit notes of bachelor.”

Affection & Other Accidents, Ajayi’s latest collection, is a departure from his previous works. If A Woman’s Body is a Country is slick, smooth and sophisticated, Affection is jarring, embodying the unpredictable nature of accidents. It takes readers on an extraordinary journey across five cities on three continents, revealing the poet’s attempt at closure and healing. What’s particularly intriguing is Ajayi’s vigorous experimentation with literary forms like prose poetry, autofiction, and ghazal to examine his traumatic past and ongoing heartbreak.

Through recurring motifs and modified Haiku “Interlogues,” Ajayi refocuses the narrative whenever it strays into other interests—music, medicine, grief, and Yoruba cosmology. These tropes emphasize the unravelling of affection, or, as he describes it, “the fatal accident of affection.”

Affection & Other Accidents was named the best-selling poetry collection of 2022 by Open Country Magazine and Roving Heights Bookshop. It was also named Best Poetry Collection at the Port Harcourt Poetry Festival in 2023.

Dami Ajayi

Portrait courtesy of Ojima Abalaka

Portrait Credits: Ojima Abalaka

There is something unsettling about the poetry of Dami Ajayi.

Indeed, we can use that wholesome and bold word, poetry, because there is a body of work. Ajayi is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Affection & Other Accidents. Perhaps his most vulnerable and emotionally riveting book yet, it draws from his other works.

Clinical Blues, his debut collection of poems, was described by writer and architect Ayodele Arigbabu, as a “debut [that] runs the risk of being labelled a classic.” It has been 11 years since it was shortlisted for the inaugural Melita Hume Prize, the first of its many accolades including being longlisted for the Wole Soyinka Prize for African Literature and awarded the first runner-up for the Association of Nigerian Authors Prize in 2015.

Clinical Blues was recently restored into print after it was out of print (but it never left of our collective imagination!). It remains a watershed moment heralding a change of guard in contemporary Nigerian poetry.  Ajayi’s poems, at once playful, sinful, and soulful, are the gambit that has inspired a new generation of bards if the words of Nigeria’s Poet Laureate Romeo Oriogun are considered.

With a supremely teasing (and controversial) title, his second book, A Woman’s Body is a Country, is a rollicking meditation on the lives of a peripatetic Lagos bachelor who writes lyrical poems about dreams, human bodies, passionate lovers, and soulful songs.  Think Sango, Cyprian Ekwensi’s protagonist in People of the City—but its reincarnation in a poetic persona. Like Sango, our poet may have found love or its close equivalent in the denouement.

In the eponymous final poem in the book, Ajayi writes, “You play me your favourite song/because love is assimilation.” At the end of this poem, he declares his devotion to the most primal masculine impulse. An erection for his lover becomes synonymous with patriotism against the backdrop of Cuba’s Buena Vista Social Club classic song, Chan Chan. The curtain drops on a perfect ending described by IfeOluwa Nihinola as “the exit notes of bachelor”, and the unsuspecting reader imagines a happy ending—till they encounter his third volume!

Affection & Other Accidents is as kinetic as a title gets, but more fittingly, it tracks a continuum with his sophomore. If A Woman’s Body is suave and smooth, Affection is jarring, perhaps because an accident is not a desirable outcome.

In Affection, that affection found in A Woman’s Body is means tested in an extraordinary journey across five cities on three continents. We watch the unravelling of a poet (and his poetics) in the most devastating sequence of events.  Ajayi is at his most pensive but also at his most mischievous. With the right quantum of self-deprecation, he experiments with poetic forms, stretching the limit of the prose poem in his eponymous sequence of poems that has been described as autofiction to writing a ghazal about his ruptured childhood innocence.

There are no footnotes to either affirm or refute these claims, just recurring motifs by way of gorgeous short poems called Interlogues, that refocus the narrative whenever he strays into his other preoccupation—music, medicine, grief, Yoruba cosmology—and reminds us of what is at stake here: the unravelling of affection, or as he would rather have us believe, the fatal accident of this affection.

Named the best-selling poetry collection of 2022, the year of its publication by Open Country Magazine and Roving Heights Bookshop, Affection was also recently named as the most impactful poetry collection at the Port Harcourt Poetry Festival.