Nigerian Poet Announced as Winner of the National Poetry Series
by Sirajo Abdulazeez Illo (Bá Sabouke) Nigerian poet, D. M. Aderibigbe, has been announced as a winner of the National Poetry Series 2024 for his manuscript titled The 82nd Division. Among other honors, his debut book of poems How the End First Showed (University of Wisconsin Press, 2018) won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry. In a social media post, the poet expressed; "I'm happy to share that my manuscript, The 82nd Division, has been chosen as a winner of the 2024 National Poetry Series and will be published by Akashic Books next fall. I'm a big dreamer, but not even in my wildest dream did I think I would win an award as significant and prestigious as this." He added that, " All I ever want to do is write unapologetically about my Nigeria." D. M. Aderibigbe is from Lagos, Nigeria. Currently, he is an assistant professor of Creative Writing at the University of Southern Mississippi. He has received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Confe