Hussain Ahmed is a Nigerian poet, translator, and environmentalist. He received a 2021 Barry and Susan Hannah award from the University of Mississippi and won the 2022 Orison Poetry Prize.

Praise

“In a soliloquy a voice speaks alone, and yet this voice is never lonely, so deeply and committedly does it speak to a listener or reader. I felt trusted and welcomed into intimacy by these deeply lyrical and musical poems. “I was born to make a map,” the poet says. I feel grateful to have it in my hand.”

— Kazim Ali

“Hussain Ahmed’s Soliloquy with the Ghosts in Nile sings in prayer, remembrance, and embrace. These poems, of a survivor seeking to honor the lost, undo and remake language into a new apparatus with which to love and carry the dead. These poems are caretakers of memory, lush and in love with the world, even in war, even in grief. ‘The moon shines brightest during the curfew,’ Ahmed writes. ‘There are more birds in the sky during the war.’”

— Melissa Ginsburg, author of Dear Weather Ghost

“Soliloquy is a book of poetry that inhabits a transitional realm that is both emotional and physical. The poems contain a familiar yet transcending character, as though they recognize the wounds we bear during our daily encounters yet do not perceive. Hussain re-imagines grief, encouraging us to see the aesthetics of anxiety.”

— Jumoke Verissimo, author of I am Memory