Versopolis Podcast #34: ‘Africans ourselves are imagining queerness, even if we don’t have a record of it from a 100 years ago’

Nigerian poet, musician and LGBTQ activist Logan February is one of the most prominent young voices writing today. We explored the urgency and strangeness in Sylvia Plath’s confessional writing, how her work embodies the courage to reveal what is interior without fully explaining it. Logan spoke about mystery in poetry as something that keeps us returning, a force that resists being too lucid, where what feels difficult or painful can be sublimated, turned into art through both emotion and intellect.

Logan reflected on growing up surrounded by Greek mythology instead of Yoruba stories, a consequence of colonial erasure that shapes identities and spiritual imagination. They shared how Christianity, queerness and indigenous myths produce a non-dual world, where what is and what is not coexist, and poetry becomes a way to honour intangible realities we are taught to doubt. For them, words offer power, reshaping culture, restoring dignity and imagining futures like ‘Afroqueer Hallucinations,’ where Africans themselves define queerness rather than searching for proof in erased histories.

Logan February (1999) is a celebrated Nigerian poet, author and multi-disciplinary artist. Born in Anambra State and raised in Ibadan, they are a prominent non-binary voice in contemporary literature, openly identifying with they/them pronouns. February honed their craft studying psychology at the University of Ibadan and creative writing at Purdue University. Their acclaimed literary works include the poetry collection In the Nude (also published as Mannequin in the Nude in the US) and chapbooks Painted Blue with Saltwater and How to Cook a Ghost. Their writing has earned significant recognition, including being a finalist for the African Poetry Book Fund’s prize and a Pushcart Prize nominee.