Sundress Reads: Review of The Years of Blood

In The Years of Blood (Fordham University Press, 2025), Adédayọ̀ Agarau boldly walks us through a landscape of grief, pointing us to anguish, yes, but also to beauty. This multilingual and reflective poetry collection is full of hauntings—images of death and dreams of family members finding safety. The speaker here is never alone, which can sometimes feel nightmarish and other times act as a reminder to hold onto hope. Agarau honors Nigeria with every poem, both bearing witness to reality and conjuring a future desired by every person who calls this place home.

While scenes of brutality saturate many pages within The Years of Blood, Agarau writes with humanity. The collection starts with “Wind,” a prose-block poem from the perspective of a speaker with anxiety. Agarau writes,

This imagining comes after the speaker lists other possibilities of what could be—all depictions of violence enacted on close family members. The speaker here so strongly wants, needs, to feel connected to his loved ones, even as a ghost. He dreams himself as the wind—perpetual and permeating all spaces, especially home.

Agarau’s unbreakable bond to where he is from elevates The Years of Blood apart from other collections, all the while remaining intimate and sacred. “Boys who never die” is a list-like ode poem to the three-dimensionality of men and boys in Ìbàdàn that I found especially moving. Not only is there an entire stanza naming over twenty boys, but Agarau shows us their hearts, their minds, and their souls. He describes “Boys who dance / around plastic chairs,” “Boys who gaze at the moon,” and “Boys who call me friend” (25). Even as we readers are introduced to “Boys who carry scars their fathers give them” we also meet “Boys the hope of a chameleon— / always changing, always changing” (Agarau 26-27). There is multiplicity in this community, full of good, trouble, beauty, and pain. I can feel Agarau’s love so strongly, even when the poetry is written “in a language wet with loss” (15). There are few better ways to honor your home more than to write about it, with full honesty.

Religion is also a prevalent theme throughout these pages, with many poems to or about God/gods. In “It begins with gratitude & ends in rage,” Agarau expresses thankfulness, “I am grateful that I have been given this day, dear Lord” (49). While addressing God here, for most of the poem, the speaker contemplates his lineage, particularly his relationship to his father. Slowly moving towards the rage indicated in the title, the speaker can’t help but compare his (birth) father to his (religious) Father. He asks,

Lord, shepherd, father, king…God is depicted and realized in many forms. As this poem sits around the middle of the collection, I take particular note of Agarau’s questioning of his own name, which is listed in the book’s Index as “A Yorùbá name given to sons of royal descent…[meaning] ‘The crown has morphed into joy’” (89). This existential self-reflection is not only striking but is also deeply connected to Agarau’s spirituality. Just over ten pages prior, “Fine boy writes a poem about anxiety” ends with another arresting mention of God that also reflects the connection between family, faith, self, and safety. Agarau writes, “your god is everything / that lets you come inside. / mother, lover” (38). While this time referencing mother instead of father, the speaker is noting how our lineage, parents, and ancestors are our safety and home.

Tenderness book-ends the collection. In the last poem, “Litany in which my father returns safely at night,” there is no direct mention of the wind from the opening poem, but many instances of sound that draw our attention to the air: “a small decibel of music escaping someone’s window” and “a dog barks” (Agarau 86). What the speaker hears directly from people, however, is what Agarau uses to guide us towards his gentle wish:

Like a skilled cinematographer, Agarau holds his hands up, making a camera with his thumbs and index fingers. Slowly, he narrows us readers into the heart of the poem, his father, the addressee of this litany, this prayer. At the last line, of both “Litany” and the entire collection—“We all go to sleep”—I found myself dropping my shoulders in relief. Agarau writes so beautifully, offering this gift to himself and his community.

Simultaneously recounting terrible horrors and blessing loved ones, Agarau trusts his memory to guide readers through a variety of poetic forms and storytelling techniques. He is an honest but kind navigator, one that is unafraid to bear witness and invested in a better future for himself, for Black boys, and for all. The Years of Blood is a must read amidst today’s world’s violence at home and abroad, both as a wake up call and a source of hope.

The Years of Blood is available for pre-order from Fordham University Press

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Livia Meneghin (she/her) is the author of feathering and Honey in My Hair. She is currently the Assistant Chapbook Editor and Reads Editor at Sundress Publications, and has been awarded recognition from The Academy of American Poets, Breakwater Review, The Room Magazine, the Writers’ Room of Boston, the City of Boston, and elsewhere. Her writing has found homes in Colorado Review, CV2, Gasher, The Journal, Osmosis, and Thrush, among others. Since earning her MFA in Poetry, she teaches writing and literature at the collegiate level. She is a cancer survivor.