Potery — Dami Folayan

We can train ourselves to respect our feelings and to transpose them into a language so they can be shared. And where that language does not exist, it is our poetry which helps fashion it.

— Audre Lorde, The Master’s Tools CanNever Dismantle the Master’s House

Listen up.

As a decolonial researcher, I employ multiple registers of argumentation and multidisciplinary research practices within my academic work. Through centring alternate modes of knowledge formation and communication I engage in a democratisation of knowledge to engage those who are usually shut out of traditional academic texts and inquiry.

Creative communication is necessitated by my discussion on the emotive realities of coloniality and its impacts. My use of poetry draws on the rhythmic musicality of Black Studies and Yoruba storytelling traditions. Such traditions often adopt a round-about way of communicating, leaving some of the lessons to be deciphered by the audience while making others more readily understood. My use of poetry and creativity enhances the accessibility of my academic inquiry and achieves the decolonial aim of opening up ways of speaking and knowing.

Below you can listen to the sound files of poetry from some of my academic writing and research.

PhD Poetry: How do we do Black Womanhood in These Spaces?

To cite: Folayan, D. (forthcoming). How do we do Black Womanhood in These Spaces? An exploration of the experiences of Black Women at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. [Doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge].

PhD Poetry:

PaDELS Chapter: From Colonial Legacies to Decolonial Futures

To cite: Folayan, D. (2024). From Colonial Legacies to Decolonial Futures: Explorations of Coloniality Through Oxbridge and Lagdan in Bagga-Gupta, S. (Ed) Palgreave Handbook for Decolonising Education and Language Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan. [forthcoming]

PaDELS Poem: Bello’s Ijala

Audio Block