Theresa Lola

In Yoruba culture, newborn babies are welcomed into the world, and ushered into the social fabric, through naming ceremonies filled with songs of praise. The names bestowed communicate where the baby has come from – the circumstances of its birth, the atmosphere in the home – and where its future will take it. Join poet Theresa Lola as she shares poems from her second collection, Ceremony for the Nameless, and discusses the act of naming and how it shapes us. Asking questions about the realities of being both Nigerian and British, tracing the lineages of names, and considering why some people deserve to be named while others are treated as though invisible, Lola conjures up a world of words conveying the diasporic experience.

Lola is a poet and writer from South London. She served as the Young People’s Laureate for London from 2019-20, and her poem ‘Equilibrium’ was added to OCR’s GCSE English Literature syllabus in 2022. Lola was featured in the ‘Forces for Change’ issue of British Vogue as a next generation talent.