All That Refuses to Die

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.

"Michael Imossan is a capacious poet. He shows us how a heart can take in an entire continent and spread it as love to the world. His collective heart is perhaps the most interior heart and most true."—Fady Joudah, author of The Earth in the Attic and Tethered to Stars"What is impressing me about Michael Imossan's work is the manner in which he is negotiating multiple 'influences' and compulsions as a poet, for these manifest themselves in his lyricism and his engagement with a personal narrative of self and self-identity as well as his own wrestling with the influence of tradition. It is telling that were we to list the personages that appear in his epigraphs and, to some extent, in his allusions, we will understand Imossan to be fully ensconced in contemporary world literature. And yet we will also see the extent to which he has become immersed in the varied milieu of contemporary African poetry."—Kwame Dawes, from the foreword

• Foreword by Kwame DawesAcknowledgements Stories that I Must OpenTrue StoryCollector of HurtTiiraArise NewsWhat Death Can Be Offered All that Refuses to Die?I Want to LavenderWith What Heart Will She Forgive?Going Home to MotherRunThe Philosophy of EscapeIn the Centre of All that Refuses to DiePlease, Native MeThe Door of No ReturnI. A Lineage of WaterII.III.IV.V.NamingNo Victor, No VanquishedBreaking newsDeborahCalling the Name of God in VainThe Necromancy of Dead ProtestersSouthern KadunaHerdsmenThe Nigerian DreamGiven Another ChanceOne Day I Will Relive My MemoriesTell Me About HomeSoftness Lives HereWelcome to CamerounWhat do I Have?OceanI Will Go Back HomeSinking SongThree NigeriasWaiting for Tomorrow to Turn GreenThere’s No Hell in Love, Only HeavenThe Complicity of Language/All That Refuses to DieKofar Na’IsaDaughters of MeLexis and SufferingAiding and Abetting JoyShameSuffocating songsSand FoodBecause All Has Refused to DieBecause Nigerian Poets Shouldn’t Be Writing About Love and Ice-creamsRose-Petal-GirlNYSCAll That Refuses to Die is Dead Notes and Source Acknowledgments