top of page
Search

Friday Feature: Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi


Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi, Frontier I, is a Nigerian-Hausa poet, digital artist, and photographer from Bobi. She is an undergraduate student of Medical Laboratory Science at Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto, winner of the inaugural Akachi Chukwuemeka Prize for Literature '23 and Gimba Suleiman Hassan Gimba ESQ Poetry Prize '22, a Pushcart Nominee and Best of The Net Nominee. Her works can be found in Strange Horizons, Fiyah Literary Magazine, Agbowo, Arc Poetry Magazine, Ake Review, Native Skin, The Drift, Lucent Dreaming, 20.35 Africa, Trampset, and elsewhere. Follow her on Twitter.




A SPEECH ON HOW TO KNOT A HAUSA TONGUE


Standing on the fodium,

frefaring to give a speech

on how to fasten a tongue,

I make my C hold its reflection

on every P-word

that four out of my mouth

to stof me from fronounzing

words like fretty, feofle, fray, fain

wrongly and at the tif where my tongue

is a measure of how much English

it can hold without breaking,

slightly tight to form a bridge

between my voice and the mic,

I ended the speech saying,

flease, learn to ferfect your fronounzations.

Thank you.



###



Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. TORCH has featured work by Toi Derricotte, Tayari Jones, Sharon Bridgforth, Crystal Wilkinson, Patricia Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Elizabeth Alexander, and others. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats.

Comments


bottom of page