A Prelude to Caving by Michael Imossan

Michael Imossan is a Nigerian writer whose debut chapbook For the Love of Country and Memory was awarded the Nigerian News Direct Poetry Column NND Chapbook Prize in 2022. In the same year, he was a Best of Net nominee; he had an honourable mention for the DiBiase Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the Lumiere Review Writing Contest (poetry).

Michael Imossan’s superpower—the style he is carving for himself—is the ability to be very personal in his poetry and yet be relatable to readers. Often, you’d hear his lines spliced with explainers—an interesting technique. In A Prelude to Caving his vulnerability is palpable and almost every line is written as if to approach salvation: “Once, on my way to write a poem about country, I googled for / flowers with shorter life span and saw us: Morning Glories / at the precipice of dusk.” Dig into this gazelle; let Imossan speak to you.