Sailing for Ithaca

As a Nigerian émigré poet, Abayomi Animashaun has lived in the United States for over twenty years. His work is influenced by such diverse writers as Rainer Maria Rilke, C.P. Cavafy, William Stafford, Odysseus Elytis, Rabindranath Tagore, John Keats, Jose Saramago, Chinua Achebe, and Antonio Machado.

Among the themes that Animashaun explores in his writings are faith, unknowing, loss, the burdens of memory, and what it means to be black, Nigerian, and an immigrant in America. His poems often document the happenings of an inner country, where demarcations between the lived and the imagined do not exist and where people, animals, and inanimate objects break from the confines of their categorizations, in order to relate with each other freely.

To enter this country, passports are not required – since there are no border agents or guards. Travelers can stay as long as they want and call the country what they like. Some call it “The Other Nigeria”; others call it “Ithaca.”