FRETWIRE is an attempt to understand the shifting meaning of poetry. Its critical pace, contortions, grace, quiet revolution. These things that grow out of varied enthusiasms, refusals, and shape-shifting poems. Among other phenomena, for me, poetry has turned out to be good in making connections with other people. Despite everything, there is beauty. The mixture of anatomical intimacy and spiritual/psychological intimacy is my ideal in this book. In FRETWIRE, I have made peace with displacement and rootedness.


Uche Nduka is a Nigerian-American poet, writer, and songwriter. He is the author of EEL ON REEF (2007), IJELE (2012), NINE EAST (2013), FACING YOU (2020) and 8 other books of poetry. His essays on travel, poetics, consciousness, music and mortality can be found in books and online. He teaches Literature at CUNY (Queens College) and lives in New York City