"Strange Beach takes its title from Claudia Rankine's poem Citizen: An American Lyric which describes each body is a strange beach, and if you let in the excess emotion, you will recall the Atlantic Ocean breaking on our heads. The shoreline is a recurring image in Strange Beach's poems, a threshold where forces collide and the landscape is forever changing shape."
"Olayiwola's verse dances between the abstract and the philosophical, and there are instances when the narrative thread is discarded and meaning is hard to glean. Clarity comes with hearing it read out loud, however. Olayiwola's narration brims with warmth and passion, allowing us to bask in imagery, atmosphere and the speaker's rich interior world."
"In Crustacean, the speaker observes a figure running their hand through water when a little crustacean attaches itself to you fingertip In its vibration we ourselves are seen. To love what you cannot see or to see what you cannot love? Which is your problem?"
Strange Beach, Oluwaseun Olayiwola's first poetry collection, examines themes of race, family, queer identity, hedonism, and embodiment. The title references Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric, using the shoreline as a recurring metaphor for thresholds where opposing forces meet and landscapes constantly shift. Olayiwola's verse oscillates between abstract and philosophical registers, sometimes abandoning narrative clarity for atmospheric depth. The poems gain full resonance through oral performance, where Olayiwola's warm, passionate narration illuminates rich imagery and the speaker's interior world. Individual poems like the title work and Crustacean employ vivid physical imagery to explore emotional extremity, perception, and the paradoxes of love and sight.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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