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While I Yet Live<\/em> begins sudden and bold; the speaker of \u2018Obit.\u2019 Announcing<\/p>\n i will die in London in the neighbourhood When the poet writes:<\/p>\n \u2026sweat Stumbling is put upon the reader\u2019s tongue by the cut of the line. There is an exactness in the handling of the clipped, high \u2018i’s of pidgin and spreading low of \u2018tongues\u2019 and \u2018song\u2019. I think this balancing act, of speakers always just on the brink of becoming, is in part why the pamphlet is exhilarating. In \u2018John 19:28\u2019, restraint and expanse work in tandem to create an ecstatic feeling. The reader anticipates entire sentences and space on the page denies these, in<\/p>\n of me\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 please\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 everything\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0on me<\/p>\n Only by letting go of expectation and leaning in on loosening syntax can you proceed through the poem. There is a movement forward by relinquishing. I the reader pass through lighter, more motile. With regards to the how the speakers of these poems move, I like how attuned Odubango is to his speakers invoking themselves, often with Biblical urgency. The poet outlines his subjects by writing of these subjects outlining themselves. In<\/p>\n you tar \u201cyou\u201d comes before \u201cme\u201d; the \u2018I\u2019 is dependent on you to begin. These lines are dense with vowels, but none of the same; it is a moment of\u00a0 differences held together. The gathering of varying things is shown again in \u2018We\u2019; the self-negating of<\/p>\n talking nothing brought together under \u201cmy own name\u201d. There is no shying from contradictions, or falter. It is said because the speaker wants to say. Odubanjo is closely attuned to spoken speech outside poetry; to everyday conversation, and how to bring it through into poetry, inflecting it newly. In \u2018Ineffable Name\u2019, the poet makes \u201ccos\u201d the line\u2019s point of orbit, patterning sound around it, just as it turns the line casually.<\/p>\n you don\u2019t know no more cos he had your name<\/p>\n The sequence itself is one of differences held together. I am struck by the range of forms. There is the found poetry of \u2018I\u2019. Here, Enoch Powell\u2019s speech is appropriated. It is broken open, into a river that breaks \u201cintractable\u201d from its course. There is the blank verse of \u2018Watershed\u2019, the poem writing its own rules just as the \u201cwe\u201d within explores and finds<\/p>\n \u2026cds our parents kept The poem is studded with detail; the nostalgic texture of \u201csoft carpet on toes\u201d, the precise cultural marker of \u201cwhen michael sang ma makoosa\u201d. Blank verse is rendered more sparsely in \u2018Songs in the Key of Terror\u2019. Repetition beats dynamically amongst this pared-back language, as in<\/p>\n so petite mort In these poems, the speakers seem to exist, suspended, just before they come into singing, and when Odubanjo begins singing through them, these \u2018I\u2019s start to gather themselves into bodies ardent to be alive.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\ni grew up in\u2026<\/p>\n
\n-ed tongues and pidgin song to cease<\/p>\n
\nme so<\/p>\n
\nbut nothing but<\/p>\n
\nin cabinets<\/p>\n
\nso rumpunchblooded
\nso in the flesh<\/p>\n