Fierce Elegy by Peter Gizzi (Penguin, £9.99)
“Love”, “wounds”, “sky”, “moon”, “mirror”, “tears” – the most cliched words in poetry. But what of it, Gizzi asks, if the spectre of death continues to make us into cliched subjects? “If I write about the moon, / it’s because it’s there.” Lyrics of resignation are juxtaposed with ecstatic lines that reimagine silence as “conversations with the dead”. Spare and raked of impurities, these poems reside in an airy purgatory of the soul: “To have died in youth and remain. / To be good with that. / To forget now who was speaking.” Although composed in an “old language” that reminds us of tradition, in its beautiful, fiery insistence this collection redeclares the elegy as the undying practice of the living.
Adam by Gboyega Odubanjo (Faber, £12.99)
“Life isn’t half as good if everyone gets one.” This highly anticipated collection from the acclaimed British-Nigerian poet, who died in 2023, is a monumental polyphonic odyssey that tells the story of “Adam”, the name given to an unidentified boy whose torso was discovered in the Thames in 2001. What Odubanjo accomplishes in just under 40 poems extends beyond mere persona; Adam is an avatar, “playing who so ever [he] wanted to be that day”. In Odubanjo’s lushly intellectual and disarmingly jovial poetics, autobiography parallels archival material. His unmistakable voice fuses Yoruba, English, Nigerian Pidgin: “everything on credit highlife lovely / every ting na double double everything / london be de place for me / where i dey chop money”. Reading this collection is an experience of exquisite heartbreak.
