Covering more than five hundred years of cultural transformation, Bakandamiya: An Elegy is a book-length epic poem set in Northern Nigeria. The poem moves from passages of mythic power to elegant lyricism with remarkable skill, subverting the legend of Bayajidda, a prince from Baghdad whose arrival reshaped the outlook of the Hausas, a Native ethnic group in West Africa. Told in part from a Bori spirit’s point of view and in part through personal lyrics, part prayer and part praise song, Bakandamiya decries the loss of culture and spirituality due to colonization from both the West and the East. Even as it subverts myths and popular beliefs and addresses some of the events that led to the Nigerian civil war, it tackles the lingering question of nationhood. In this work of lyric and poetic ambition, Saddiq Dzukogi blends the personal with the mythical, expanding the griot tradition of Bakandamiya, a poetic form from Northern Nigeria popularized by Mamman Shata. Here the form travels from orature to contemporary poetics for the first time, taking its place at the vanguard of contemporary poetry.
