Author: Gboyega Odubanjo
Publisher: Faber
Paperback
One of our books of the year 2024!
So says: Gboyega Odubanjo’s epic, Bible-rewriting, East London-representing poetry collection ends ‘in the name of my man and my man somebody say amen’. It’s impossible not to reply a heartfelt Amen to this extraordinary prayer / protest / play / phone video of a collection that sings with the voices we hear around us on Kingsland Road every day running, jumping and shouting through for joy, recognition and grieving. This is a quintessential writing of contemporary London and its global connects, and a book dear to Burley Fisher’s heart that we heard in progress through many of Gboyega’s readings at the shop.
You can listen via our podcast to him chatting to Tice Cin and Frankie Miren, with Will Harris in the chair, about writing real Londons from our 2021 festival: a recording can’t bring him back to us, but it keeps him with us as witness to his brilliance. Like a nine night, Adam comes to remember in tears and laughter and above all family: claiming deep kinship with a Black boy found heinously murdered in the Thames in 2001 and named “Adam” by police, Odubanjo sounds out possible lives and relations through deep spirit and topspin to give life that itself gives, with the giving big generosity that shone from Gboyega as a writer, editor and being.
of the field and every bird of the air and every man on the block to see
what adam would call them.
and adam says—you are now the wet of my wet—the adam of my adam.