“Nduka Otiono’s excellent book begins a dialogue between Canadian poetics and the rich resources of Nigerian poetry. His book is a call to North American poets, who should open our ears and then offer our response to this generous engagement with our poetic forms. Africa has much to teach us, and here is an ideal place to learn… Come and listen. You will be enchanted.” – Bert Almon, Poet, and Professor, Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
“How might we make music in a burning house? Love in a Time of Nightmares shows us how. Lacerating and lyrical, these songs are fragments out of a still-raging storm whose other name is Nigeria. Tenderness knits despair and hope together in this daring collection, and the product is the ambiguity that must be the stance of all those who dare sing in the midst of an inferno.” – Ike Okonta, Department of Politics, University of Oxford, UK.
“In this collection, the anecdotal melds with the experiential…We encounter verses that serve as a template for the lyrical, the deployment of narratives and folksy idioms that are enchanting. [The] journey motif flutters from Nigeria to Canada, as the author attempts to bridge borders…Otiono offers us a poetic sacrament.” – The Sunday Sun
“Only an accomplished poet can write these remarkable poems, haunting and enchanting songs in smooth-flowing lines. Love in a Time of Nightmares is definitely mature and exhilarating. It is a memorable collection. You can’t but be mesmerized by these poems.” – Tanure Ojaide, poet and Frank Porter Graham Professor of Africana Studies, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, USA.
“Nduka Otiono is a poet of the musical word… His erudition blends seamlessly with the spoken sacred word of the local lore in poetry that is at once memorable and sophisticated. He wrenches love from the Nigerian nightmare with an uncommon touch at the instance and distance of an alien shore. He breaks bold ground in borderless intercourse, a noble feat that conjures up the landscape and dreamscape of Joseph Brodsky and Pablo Neruda.” – Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, award-winning author of God of Poetry
“Here are poems to enter into and live in and live by. The personal, the communal, the planetary inhabit these cosmic collages that stylistically stride from oral structures to the architectonics of the written. Nduka Otiono’s poetic stance is that of defiant disruption and truth-telling. Read this book and feel the pulse.” – Uche Nduka, award-winning author of eight volumes of poetry
