In Retrospect: An Interview with D.M. Aderibigbe, Author of 82nd Division
We have a new “In Retrospect” interview with poet D.M. Aderibigbe for our series which asks renowned poets to look back over their poems and collections, mapping out their poetic processes. From his early writing to his most recent collection, we’re looking to hear about core poems and fascinations which have shaped his body of work. Aderibigbe’s 2025 collection 82nd Division was selected for the National Poetry Series and is available to preorder from Akashic Books. Among other insights, he shares how the exploration of forms such as the duplex, sonnet, villanelle, and blues poem in his new collection added a layer of intricacy to his poetic practice.
Frontier Poetry: What was the first poem, published or unpublished, that you remember writing? What aspect of it do you look back at and appreciate the most?
D.M. Aderibigbe: I can’t remember the exact title of the poem, but I can still smell the smoke from the danfo bus’s tired tailpipe—I can still feel the boiling breeze of that afternoon. It was the day after the last day of my first year at the University of Lagos. I was on the way to my grandmother’s house in Ikotun. The man sitting beside me on the danfo bus was kind enough to hand me his newspaper after he caught me stealing a glance. In the middle of the newspaper, under a section titled “Arts and Society,” there was a profile of the Nigerian poet Cecilia Kato. It was the first time I had ever read about a living poet or that poetry could be about anything. This incident on the bus breathed into my dormant imagination. That evening, I wrote a poem about my mother’s untimely death. It was the first time I heard the voice of my grief.
FP: If there is a poem you could identify as either the launch point, catalyst, or axle your first collection of poetry spins around, which poem would that be? What did the process of writing that poem entail?
DA: “The Hungry Man.” It’s a poem about one evening when my father returned from one of his long absences and found that the pot of yams on the stove was only for my mother, me, and my two sisters. In a fit of rage, he kicked the pot off the stove and stormed out of the house. This poem is the oldest surviving piece in my first collection and also embodies most of the themes in the collection: my father’s absence from home, his rage, and the manifestation of that rage on my mother’s face.
In terms of process, it’s one of those poems that come almost fully formed. In one of the opening scenes of a movie I was watching, a character dished out plates of yams, which triggered this particular memory, and then language followed.
FP: What lessons did writing and publishing your first collection of poetry teach you that you applied to the process of creating your second collection?
DA: Before a reading in New Orleans last September, the poet Henry Goldkamp commented on a jarring shift he noticed between the poems in my first collection, How the End First Showed, and my new collection, 82nd Division. Thinking about this statement in light of this question, Goldkamp couldn’t be more right. In my second collection, I was wholly invested in the formal elements of each poem. Put differently, it was as important to me as the air I take in that the form of each poem adds some degree of complexity to it. It wasn’t always the case with my first collection. However, I had to write the poems in that collection to arrive at this destination.
FP: Tell us about your latest published collection of poetry. Could you briefly map out its evolution from a starting point to the final draft?
DA: My latest collection of poems, 82nd Division, named after a West African regiment that fought alongside the British during World War II, explores life in my homeland, Nigeria—a former British colony—and examines how colonialism continues to impact all spheres of life there.
During the book’s development, I began by writing the three longest poems, which coincidentally all take place during the same period. These poems provided the early draft of the collection with a solid thematic and temporal foundation to build upon. To be clear, while a significant number of poems in the collection are direct descendants of the initial three poems, an equal number of others are nothing more than their distant relatives. In other words, while the first three poems are connected to every poem in the collection, the degree of such connection differs greatly.
FP: What running themes or fascinations do you identify throughout your poetry, from your earliest poems to your most recent ones?
DA: Places. Specific areas of Lagos, such as Bariga, where I was born; Ikorodu, where I completed primary school; and Ikotun, where I later lived, have been prominent parts of my poetry over the years. To be clear, I write about and set my poems in other locations, too—both the ones I have been to and the ones I wonder about. But Lagos is my imagination’s hometown. It is where my poems return to again and again.
FP: Finally, as you are writing currently (or simply thinking, which is where writing starts), what is something—an idea, social issue, piece of art, song, etc.—that you are obsessed with?
DA: “Triumphant” by Olamide and Bella Shmurda is a song that has lived within my earshot since I discovered it on YouTube a few months ago. In addition to being a knockout, it details life in Lagos, leaving home in search of greener pastures, and overcoming challenges—themes that my new project also deals with. It’s an understatement to say I find the song inspirational for my work.
