Helen Chukwuma, PhD, Professor of English, Dept. of English and Modern Foreign Languages, Jackson State University, Jackson. Mississippi. USA.

"Nwagbara’s collection is a political allegory of a nation in turmoil of self-realisation, self-acclaim and survival from the mitigating calamities that assail it. Fire in Paradise is reminiscent of the proto Miltonian title of Paradise Lost and the efforts of the people to regain their paradise. The poems toward the end of the collection show the tortuous efforts of the people at Paradise Regained…Revolutionary tropes as blood, death, stagnation dot the poems and Nwagbara excels in his picturesque imagery depicting an environment under destruction and a people hideously traumatised…The fire in the Delta paradise has not been extinguished but the poet shows that the future of its attainment is bright and promising. Thus the poems end with hope."