My appetite for silence is eating away my tongue
Things don’t have to be spoken to be said
Things don’t have to be said to be spoken
This is how you reclaim your voice:
A tongue sleeps in the corridor of my mouth but everything left unsaid still echoes
Silence is a dialect
To speak in braille is to feel everything that swims in quiet
In gesturing, the unsaid wears a dance
My mouth has devoured a mouthful of quiet and I have become unbreakable:
Tell me, how can Babel fall if language cannot bind us?
Abu Ibrahim
popularly known as IB is a Nigerian poet whose work has caused tremendous influence and change. His debut poetry album “Music Has Failed Us” was considered for a Grammy nomination at the 2022 awards. This body of work is available on all major streaming platforms. Some of his works have also been published in literary outfits in Nigeria, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and more. He has performed at the Pa Gya Literary Festival in Ghana, Lagos International Poetry Festival, Say It Out, Lagos Talks Town Hall Meetings, Nigeria National Chess Championship, Quramo Festival of Words, Global Poetry Meet organized by Poets of Bangalore, India, and more. He is a recipient of the Lagos State University (LASU) Debate Society Impact Maker Award for Storytelling and Outstanding Impact, and also the 2023 winner of the Port Harcourt Poetry Festival Poetry/Spoken Word Poetry Album of the Year.
