Exodus - (African Poetry Book) by Adeoba (Paperback)

About the Book

Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poetry, the collection Exodus explores themes of migration--both forced and free--and of memory, transition, and the intersections between the imagined and the historic.

Book Synopsis

Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poetry, 'Gbenga Adeoba's collection Exodus focuses on forms of migration due to the slave trade, war, natural disasters, and economic opportunities.

Using the sea as a source of language and metaphor, Adeoba explores themes of memory, transition, and the intersections between the historic and the imagined. With great tenderness and power his poetry of empathy searches for meaning in sharply constructed images, creating scenes of making and unmaking while he investigates experiences of exile and displacement across time and place.

Review Quotes

"There is both passion and beauty in Adeoba's work, framed by what seems an acute sense of the power of language to capture reality. To capture and reveal truth, shrouded in all its scars, alive somehow with hope. History demands that images of drowning surge through Adeoba's Exodus. The Mediterranean is 'a grave wide enough for the numbers, ' we too 'could become a band of unnamed migrants / found floating on the face of the sea, ' and 'you could find trinket boxes or a girl's / plastic doll in that rubble. . . . / The tiny things are heavier.' Yet the poet can still imagine shorebirds' songs 'urging men to love again, calling / them to images craving tenderness.' For poetry too is a tiny thing, and a heavy one."--Alicia Ostriker, New York state poet laureate and author of Waiting for the Light
-- (12/5/2019 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

'Gbenga Adeoba is a graduate fellow at the University of Iowa. Born in Nigeria, he is the author of the chapbook Here Is Water, which appeared in the African Poetry Book Fund's New-Generation African Poets Series. His work has been published in Oxford Poetry, Pleiades, Salamander, Poet Lore, African American Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere.