Two Poems

The Seventh Wave has always been a community built upon trust, integrity, and transparency. We were alerted on March 20, 2024, of allegations of plagiarism being made against one of our contributors for Issue 16: Proximities. We take these sorts of allegations very seriously, and took steps to look into the matter, including researching this poet’s past publication history, reaching out to the editors of these particular poems, and emailing the contributor himself. We believe in offering grace by way of explanation, and want to believe in the possibility for growth and change.

However, given this poet’s past patterns of behavior and our own strong stance against any form of plagiarism, we feel that it is best to remove the two poems we published from our website, effective immediately. While we cannot confirm whether or not these two particular poems are included in the poet’s instances of plagiarism, we are removing them as a precaution, and based upon a documented history of intellectual property concerns. As a literary nonprofit with limited resources, we place great value on every contributor seat we’re able to offer, so we do not take this action lightly.

Taiye Ojo is a Nigerian eco-activist, cultural worker, and artist who uses poetry as a tool to hide his frustration with society. His practice is collaborative and often draws from personal experience or interpretation of climate change, homelessness, migration, as well as a breadth of transversal issues ranging from racism, black identity and mental health. He believes in the power of language to capture the minutiae of daily life and the natural world.

The header image is an excerpt from "Metes and Bounds," created by Ellen Wiener, featured artist for the winter edition of Issue 16: Proximities.

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