02Poetry

A Grammar of Rain

She wrote the weather until it answered.

Written by Nadia Okonjo

Sixty-one poems that treat weather as a language with tenses, moods and a subjunctive. Rain gets conjugated. A dry season is parsed for what it will not say.

Okonjo grew up between Lagos and Leeds, and this collection keeps both climates in the same mouth. The result is a book about translation that never once uses the word.

Read an extractMore by Nadia
Published
4 November 2025
Extent
96 pages
Format
Paperback, sewn
ISBN
978-1-9998-0142-9

Contents

  1. iPresent continuous
  2. iiConditional
  3. iiiSubjunctive, for a dry year
  4. ivImperative

Notices

  • Okonjo has invented a grammar and then written fluently in it, which is the only convincing kind of invention.

    The Paper Review

About Nadia Okonjo

Nadia Okonjo writes poems that behave like grammar exercises and short stories that behave like weather reports. She is the author of five collections, including A Grammar of Rain.

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She wrote the weather until it answered.
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