Aubade at Night or Serenade in the Morning. By Taofeek Ayeyemi
"Taofeek Ayeyemi’s collection, Aubade at Night or Serenade in the Morning, without fear, calls out police corruption, abuse, and exploitation in Nigeria. These powerful and brave poems weave together nation and body, political and personal, loathing and reverence for a homeland that is “…a clot of spilled blood / and everyone has his fingers / reeking of redness.” Taofeek's collection is simply stunning, haunting, needed and beautifully so; each poem leaves you wrecked and in awe. Poem by poem, Ayeyemi builds a bruised and wounded world in which we understand that the unfathomable exists, but that hope will not be crippled as “the power we tuck in our minds will make a walking stick / it will make for the journey an undying light. call it a legacy.”—Tayve Neese, Executive Editor, Trio House Press and Banyan Review
"In Aubade at Night or Serenade in the Morning, Taofeek Ayeyemi writes “‘there are things that poetry can’t cure,’/but” as he goes on to say “silence is dangerous it casts a noise-proof/veil against the voices of the crying & the dying." What Ayeyemi orbits in his stunning collection is a perpetual violence and resilience spinning in an endless cycle “because living, for me, is to die a daily death & be birthed again into mirth.” This collection, with the vastness of Ayeyemi’s poetic language, explores multitudes—from the corruption of a country, to love’s heartbreak, from familial lore to the spirit/ual underpinnings of life in this world. Reading Ayeyemi’s words is like spending time with a sacred text."—Sara Lefsyk, Editor-in-Chief, Ethel Zine & Micro Press
"Taofeek Ayeyemi’s collection, Aubade at Night or Serenade in the Morning, without fear, calls out police corruption, abuse, and exploitation in Nigeria. These powerful and brave poems weave together nation and body, political and personal, loathing and reverence for a homeland that is “…a clot of spilled blood / and everyone has his fingers / reeking of redness.” Taofeek's collection is simply stunning, haunting, needed and beautifully so; each poem leaves you wrecked and in awe. Poem by poem, Ayeyemi builds a bruised and wounded world in which we understand that the unfathomable exists, but that hope will not be crippled as “the power we tuck in our minds will make a walking stick / it will make for the journey an undying light. call it a legacy.”—Tayve Neese, Executive Editor, Trio House Press and Banyan Review
"In Aubade at Night or Serenade in the Morning, Taofeek Ayeyemi writes “‘there are things that poetry can’t cure,’/but” as he goes on to say “silence is dangerous it casts a noise-proof/veil against the voices of the crying & the dying." What Ayeyemi orbits in his stunning collection is a perpetual violence and resilience spinning in an endless cycle “because living, for me, is to die a daily death & be birthed again into mirth.” This collection, with the vastness of Ayeyemi’s poetic language, explores multitudes—from the corruption of a country, to love’s heartbreak, from familial lore to the spirit/ual underpinnings of life in this world. Reading Ayeyemi’s words is like spending time with a sacred text."—Sara Lefsyk, Editor-in-Chief, Ethel Zine & Micro Press
"Taofeek Ayeyemi’s collection, Aubade at Night or Serenade in the Morning, without fear, calls out police corruption, abuse, and exploitation in Nigeria. These powerful and brave poems weave together nation and body, political and personal, loathing and reverence for a homeland that is “…a clot of spilled blood / and everyone has his fingers / reeking of redness.” Taofeek's collection is simply stunning, haunting, needed and beautifully so; each poem leaves you wrecked and in awe. Poem by poem, Ayeyemi builds a bruised and wounded world in which we understand that the unfathomable exists, but that hope will not be crippled as “the power we tuck in our minds will make a walking stick / it will make for the journey an undying light. call it a legacy.”—Tayve Neese, Executive Editor, Trio House Press and Banyan Review
"In Aubade at Night or Serenade in the Morning, Taofeek Ayeyemi writes “‘there are things that poetry can’t cure,’/but” as he goes on to say “silence is dangerous it casts a noise-proof/veil against the voices of the crying & the dying." What Ayeyemi orbits in his stunning collection is a perpetual violence and resilience spinning in an endless cycle “because living, for me, is to die a daily death & be birthed again into mirth.” This collection, with the vastness of Ayeyemi’s poetic language, explores multitudes—from the corruption of a country, to love’s heartbreak, from familial lore to the spirit/ual underpinnings of life in this world. Reading Ayeyemi’s words is like spending time with a sacred text."—Sara Lefsyk, Editor-in-Chief, Ethel Zine & Micro Press
Taofeek Ayeyemi fondly called Aswagaawy is a Nigerian lawyer, writer and author of the chapbook Tongueless Secrets (Ethel Press, 2021) and a collection "aubade at night or serenade in the morning" (Flowersong Press, TBD 2021). His works have appeared or forthcoming in CV2, Lucent Dreaming, Ethel-zine, Up-the-Staircase Quarterly, ARTmosterrific, Banyan Review, Presence, tinywords, the QuillS and elsewhere. He won the 2021 Loft Books Flash Fiction Contest, 2018 PoeticWednesday Poetry Contest,
Honorable Mention Prizes in 2020 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2020 Akita International Haiku Contest, 2020 Fujisan Taisho International Tanka Contest and 2nd Prize in 2016 Christopher Okigbo Poetry Prize. He is @Aswagaawy on Facebook and Twitter. When he's not in the court arguing, in the chambers drafting, in the bedchamber with his cats poeticizing or meditating as a Sufi, he'll be somewhere in the world talking.