Squally Throwinka - Black British Poet

Creating Black British poetry that weaves diasporic tales through minimalist verse and mythic reflections.

Squally Throwinka is a Black British poet of Nigerian (Yoruba) descent. He was conceived in Nigeria and born in Wakefield, England, at Manygates Hospital — an unceremonious arrival that nonetheless set the pattern for a life lived between places, languages, and inheritances.

He attended Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wakefield, though he considers himself more survivor than alumnus, before going on to study Metallurgy and Microstructural Engineering at Sheffield Hallam University.

Since then, Squally has lived what might fairly be described as several different lives. Before turning fully to writing, he worked variously as a care worker, dancer, DJ, songwriter, singer, palm reader, artist, salesman, and property landlord. These roles were less a tidy sequence than an accumulation — each leaving its own residue of experience, rhythm, and observation that would eventually find its way onto the page.

The name Squally Throwinka arrived unexpectedly one early evening in a Wakefield pub, shortly after the funeral of his younger sister, Tayo. During a spirited and good-natured argument with his brother about whether anyone truly understands the famously dense imagery of a celebrated poet, Squally was challenged — half seriously, half in jest — to do better.

He accepted the challenge.

The voice followed.

Alongside his writing, Squally also works visually under the name Emmanuel Street. His paintings and mixed-media works explore many of the same elemental, ancestral, and interior landscapes that inform his poetry.

The Harmattan Oracle is Squally Throwinka’s debut poetry collection — the first public appearance of the Sand-Walker voice.

As he puts it:

“I walk with sand in my shoes.”