D. M. Aderibigbe

presents

How the End First Showed

This event includes a book signing

Date

Dec
10
Monday
December 10, 2018
7:00 PM ET

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store welcomes local poet D. M. ADERIBIGBE for a discussion of his latest poetry collection, How the End First Showed.

About How the End First Showed

Crafting raw memories into restrained and compact verse, D. M. Aderibigbe traces the history of domestic and emotional abuse against women in his family. A witnessing son, grandson, nephew, and brother, he rejects the tradition of praise songs for the honored father, refusing to offer tribute to men who dishonor their wives.

Widening his gaze to capture the moral rhythms of life in Lagos, he embraces themes of love, spirituality, poverty, compassion, sickness, and death. Aderibigbe offers both an extended elegy for his mother and poems addressed to children of the African continent, poems that speak to the past that has made them.

We salivated; slices of yam softened.

We chewed our teeth; slices of yam perished.

Mother smiled. Father arrived,

filled the room with curses;

his voice beat in our hearts,

as thunder on the walls of a building.

His empty stomach was a bowl of anger.

In a room built with our silence,

father was hitting mother.

Praise

"In the urgent, abrupt, incantational poems of D. M. Aderibigbe, an essential gesture is simile: the explicit, striving word 'like' recurs often. And in every poem, Aderibigbe thinks in metaphor. In a world of difference, amid unique strokes of memory and abandonment, violence and love, that action of likeness attains spiritual force." ―Robert Pinsky

"A debut that electrifies and ignites beacons of much-needed understanding through even the darkest of days. These memorable poems twist and tumble across entire countries while making maps of love and heartbreak. A brilliant beginning. Remember this name: Aderibigbe." ―Aimee Nezhukumatathil, contest judge

D. M. Aderibigbe
D. M. Aderibigbe

D. M. Aderibigbe

D.M. Aderibigbe is a Nigerian poet and educator whose first book, How the End First Showed, won the 2018 Brittingham Prize in Poetry. His poems have appeared in The Nation, Poetry Review, jubilat, World Literature Today, New American Writing, Prairie Schooner, Ninth Letter, Alaska Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Orleans Review, RATTLE and elsewhere. He's received fellowships from The James Merrill House, Banff, OMI International Arts Center, Ucross Foundation, Jentel Foundation and Boston University where he received his MFA in Creative Writing as a BU fellow, and also received a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship. This fall, he will become a Ph.D. student at Florida State University, Tallahassee.

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes

As you exit the station, reverse your direction and walk east along Mass. Ave. in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank. Cross Dunster St. and proceed along Mass. Ave for three more blocks. You will pass Au Bon Pain, JP Licks, and TD Bank. Harvard Book Store is located at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton St.

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