SORO SOKE BY JUMOKE VERISSIMO AND JAMES YEKU
Sọ̀rọ̀sóke: An #Endsars Anthology began as a digital archive of poetry on the EndSARS movement of 2020 on BrittlePaper, functioning as a real-time repository of poetic thoughts on the protests against police brutality that took place both online and in numerous Nigerian locations. This print edition of the anthology rearticulates a similar poetics of resistance, emphasizing the activist voice of a new generation of writers resisting the tyranny of silence and state violence.
This anthology endures beyond the disputations and slander of a state in denial. Its testimony can be trusted and should be trusted. The poets here stand as witnesses, and their words ring with the vitality of a generation that will not mortgage the voice. We respect these voices for standing up, for standing out to camp with the truth.
— Tade Ipadeola, author of The Sahara Testaments
In this gathering of poems, Nigeria’s future is slaughtered, eaten, weeping, silenced. Yet this striking anthology, a tangible testament to those who struggle for change in their country and those cut down by the so-called security forces, makes clear that the poets refuse to surrender their future quietly. Here is emotion recollected not in tranquility but in rage and grief, with cutting ridicule of injustice’s perpetrators and with salving insistence that Nigerian lives matter.
— Nathan Suhr-Sytsma author of Poetry, Print, and the Making of Postcolonial Literature.
Sọ̀rọ̀sókè bears witness to the hopes and anguish of the silenced in a country held hostage by executioners in high places. The anthology memorialises the dead and comforts the maimed, and it lyrically demands that those with arms must be stopped from continually harming the unarmed. Every poem in this book is a potent act of courage.
This anthology endures beyond the disputations and slander of a state in denial. Its testimony can be trusted and should be trusted. The poets here stand as witnesses, and their words ring with the vitality of a generation that will not mortgage the voice. We respect these voices for standing up, for standing out to camp with the truth.
— Tade Ipadeola, author of The Sahara Testaments
In this gathering of poems, Nigeria’s future is slaughtered, eaten, weeping, silenced. Yet this striking anthology, a tangible testament to those who struggle for change in their country and those cut down by the so-called security forces, makes clear that the poets refuse to surrender their future quietly. Here is emotion recollected not in tranquility but in rage and grief, with cutting ridicule of injustice’s perpetrators and with salving insistence that Nigerian lives matter.
— Nathan Suhr-Sytsma author of Poetry, Print, and the Making of Postcolonial Literature.
Sọ̀rọ̀sókè bears witness to the hopes and anguish of the silenced in a country held hostage by executioners in high places. The anthology memorialises the dead and comforts the maimed, and it lyrically demands that those with arms must be stopped from continually harming the unarmed. Every poem in this book is a potent act of courage.
