Leaked Footages (PB) (2024)

Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets

The poems in Leaked Footages carry urgent subjects, ranging from death to disappearance to grief to memory. Not only do the poems fulfill the tradition of witnessing often manifested in contemporary poets such as Garous Abdolmalekian and Ilya Kaminsky, but they extend that tradition by the medium through which they witness: the technical and the technological. Here, the camera, the closed-circuit TV, cinematographic techniques, and the cyborg are trusted for truth telling. Reality is represented in footage seen through the eyes of multifaceted speakers.

In Abu Bakr Sadiq's exploration of northern Nigeria in speculative poetry, the lyrical meets the chronicle. In this fusion of Afrofuturism with experimental poetic techniques, the reader witnesses a country ravaged by terrorism and the consequences of war, as well as the effects of these on those who survive. While the tone is grave with concern and conscience, the poems do not take the easy route of sentiment. Instead, attention is paid to structure--from the erasure poems that are informed by the theme of disappearance to the contrapuntal poems that are influenced by the testaments of leaving.

Abu Bakr Sadiq is a Nigerian poet born and raised in Minna. He is an undergraduate student at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Sadiq is the winner of the 2022 IGNYTE award for Best Speculative Poetry and a finalist for the 2023 Evaristo Prize for African Poetry. His work has been published in Boston Review, The Fiddlehead, Mizna, Fiyah, Palette Poetry, Uncanny Magazine, Augur Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, and elsewhere.