This paper considers some of the student literary magazines that emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Ibadan and Leeds, with a particular focus on the poetry published in The Horn (University College, Ibadan, est. 1958) and Poetry and Audience (University of Leeds, est. 1953). These informal, student-run magazines were underpinned by transnational literary networks between Nigeria and the UK, particularly by collaboration between poets in Ibadan and Leeds. Writers with connections to both cities contributed to or edited these magazines, including Wole Soyinka, J.P. Clark, Aigboje Higo, Kalu Uka, Tony Harrison, James Simmons, Martin Banham, John Heath-Stubbs and Geoffrey Hill. Some of these writers are now celebrated as national literary heroes. This paper not only adds to existing evidence showing that student magazines were important in constituting literary communities in Africa and the UK during this period, however, but also shows that we must look beyond the ‘nation’ if we are to better understand the collaboration that underpinned the aesthetics that developed in Ibadan and Leeds. The paper combines close reading with an analysis of the literary fields in which these magazines were produced, to show how transnational collaboration shaped the craft of a key generation of poets in Britain and Nigeria during the late 1950s and early 1960s.