Dami Ajayi

Dami Àjàyí
Born	Damilola Àjàyí 1986 (age 37–38) Nigeria
Nationality	Nigerian
Alma mater	Obafemi Awolowo University
Occupations	writer medical doctor critic
Years active	2006–present
Known for	Music reviews, poetry and essays; co-founder of Saraba magazine
Notable work	A Woman's Body Is a Country (2017)
Website	www.damiajayi.com

Dami Àjàyí (born 1986) is a Nigerian poet, medical doctor, essayist and music critic, described by Bernardine Evaristo as “a dexterous and versatile poet who flexes his linguistic muscles with surprising revelations that offer new perspectives as he illuminates the slips between memory and desire, family, community, and place.” He co-founded Saraba magazine in 2008.^[1] He is the author of three collections of poetry and a chapbook.

Biography[edit]

Dami Àjàyí was born in Nigeria in 1986. While he was an undergraduate of medicine at the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, he co-founded Saraba Magazine with another student.^[2] He also co-founded media outlets The Lagos Review and YabaLeft Review, with writers Toni Kan and Tunji Olalere respectively. He has also worked as Associate Editor for Psyche Magazine and Commissioning Editor for the British Journal of Psychiatry International.

Àjàyí was featured in the two-part BBC Radio 4 documentary Writing a New Nigeria.^[3] He has been described as one who "writes about love like liquor that drowns a person into his or her feelings.".^[4]

Poetry[edit]

In 2011, Àjàyí was listed among the "Eight Young Nigerian Poets Whose Poems Delight" on the Sentinel UK Poetry Blog.^[5] His first collection of poems, Clinical Blues, was shortlisted (in manuscript form) for the Melita Hume Prize in 2012.^[6][7] It was published by WriteHouse in 2014, and was longlisted for the biennial Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa^[8][9] and was first runner-up for Association Nigerian Authors Prize.

In 2017, his second collection of poetry, A Woman's Body is a Country, was published by Ouida Books).^[10] Of the work, Àjàyí says: "I wanted my book to show how the noun 'affection' becomes a verb, and in my attempt I was drawing from a personal reservoir, hoping that my experiences are singular as well as universal."^[11] In A Woman’s Body Is a Country, Booker prizewinner Bernardine Evaristo writes that Àjàyí “bravely exposes intimacies and his vulnerable self through poems that are honest and confessional.”^[12] The work was a finalist for the 2018 Luschei Prize and has been described as "affection brewed by loss".^[13]

His third collection, Affection and Other Accidents, was published in 2022 by Ouida Books. It was described by Peter Akinlabi as "an audacious testing of the very limits of self-revelation", where "where the poet’s act of “practicing vulnerability” finds a most heightened articulation of love's complexities and contradictions,^[14] and OlongoAfrica describes as "a personal narrative of pain" with "the signature of his poetics by his deployment of accessible language and lapidary details of poems that cross into the poet’s personal life and everyday realities."^[15]

Prose, criticism and musical journalism[edit]

Àjàyí has written short stories that have been published in Nigeria and abroad. Between 2013 and 2019, be provided critical reviews about Nigerian music to a number of online publications. He has also interviewed musicians like King Sunny Ade and (Somi)^{[16][17][18][19][20]}

He was also one of the editors of the anthology From Limbe to Lagos : NonFiction from Cameroon and Nigeria, which was the result of a writing workshop held in Limbe^[2] for young African writers.

Books[edit]

• Affection and Other Accidents (2022)
• A Woman's Body is a Country (2017)
• Clinical Blues (2014)

Chapbook

• Daybreak & Other Poems (Saraba Magazine, 2013)

Selected Publications[edit]

• “Celluloid” in On Broken Wings: An Anthology of Best Contemporary Nigerian Poetry (New York, DLite Press, 2014) ed. by Unoma Azuah
• “Talk to Me” in Gambit: Newer African Writing (Stories & Interviews) (New York,The Mantle 2014) ed. by Emmanuel Iduma & Shaun Randol
• "The Lagos Everyman"; in My Africa, My City: An Afridiaspora Anthology (Winepress Publishing) ed. by Tolu Daniel, Adeola Opeyemi
• “Old Peoples Home” Songhai 12: New Voices in Nigerian Literature (Port Harcourt, 2014) ed. by Molara Wood & Lindsay Barett
• “A Playlist for Mr Ehikhamenor” for Daydream Esoterica (RELE Gallery, 2019)
• “Aubade to my Greying” in Memento: An Anthology of Contemporary Nigerian Poetry edited by Adedayo Agarau (America, Animal Heart Press, 2020)
• “Queens”, “Sleeping Beauty (of Borehamwood)”, “Waterstones”, “Ode to a Face Mask”, “Denouement” in Relations: An Anthology of African and Diaspora Voices edited by Nana Brew-Hammond.

References[edit]