No One's Place is Reserved

A tribute to Gboyega Odubanjo

i think all that i need is to start talking and to never stop

Gboyega Odubanjo, “Poem (With Drums)”

This week’s post is for everyone, and it’s a tribute to the poet Gboyega Odubanjo.

I first saw Gboyega read at a University of East Anglia student open mic night in 2017. He was, very obviously, brilliant: funny, angry, word-perfect and original, with a sort of full-body commitment to his performance. We, the crowd, loved it.

The following year, after a BA in Literature and Philosophy, he stayed at UEA for the Poetry MA, where he was at the heart of one of the most close-knit, mutually-inspiring group of students we’ve ever known. Later, I gave a quote for his debut pamphlet, While I Yet Live (Bad Betty Press, 2019), which ended: “Reader, there has never been a better time to become a Gboyega Odubanjo fan.”

I’m all at sea typing that again: the awful loss of Gboyega this week, widely reported, is sad beyond words. I’m not going to include whole poems in this newsletter, because they’re not mine to reprint. But I will link to an online selection below.

Instead, I’m going to quote a short extract from The Poetry Review (Spring 2023), which featured a correspondence — from January this year — between Gboyega and poet and editor, Don Paterson. It was called “A Mutual Agitation: an intergenerational discussion”, and it frankly and generously measured the distance between (and sometimes, closeness of) their respective opinions on the contemporary poetry scene.

In one letter, Paterson observed:

I’ve lately realised one of age’s obligations is to offer younger poets some active discouragement. There were five debuts on the T.S. Eliot shortlist. All decent books, I’m sure […] But it’s supposed to be a career-defining award. Where is a debut poet supposed to go after that? The Nobel? And how would you feel as a time-served, perennially overlooked older poet with a respectable but unrewarded body of work, for whom a T.S. Eliot shortlisting would be a career high […] pushed out for five debuts?

Gboyega responded:

No one has been pushed out because, as much as we might love a decent queue, no one’s place is reserved. […] We both know that the poetic career is, in most cases, a fallacy. And I know of the specific difficulties that come with being a young poet today while making sure you’re able to pay for childcare or that you don’t keep the heating on for too long. Shortlistings and winnings give poets of all ages a platform — platforms from which even the parody of a career can hopefully be built. Unless I’m mistaken, the proliferation of debuts on big prize shortlists is a relatively recent thing. (There are many aspects of British poetry that are quite embarrassingly recent, many “firsts” that sound much less like celebrations than they do admissions of guilt.) And so there might be some understandable envy towards poets if it is felt that they have had easier, quicker rides. That’s fair enough, but our work doesn’t need to be legitimised by some sense of delayed satisfaction. I’d like to think we want poetry to be judged and critiqued on its own merits. If we don’t, and what we want is for poets to be awarded based on their respective oeuvres, then maybe that’s the new prize we need: The Poetry Hall of Fame, coming to a theatre near you!

(As I’m writing this I can’t help but imagine how I might look back on it in thirty-odd years. I’m aware now of the confidence I have in myself, where and how I place it in the future remains to be seen.)

We have lost a writer wise beyond his years. My condolences to all who loved Gboyega.

NOTES

To give you a sense of where Gboyega was coming from as a poet, here’s what he said in Poetry Review: “To varying degrees when I write I’m probably asking myself what O’Hara or Baraka might have done”. This is a selection of that work available online:

Oil Music: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/06/poem-of-the-month-oil-music-by-gboyega-odubanjo

A Story about Water: https://ypn.poetrysociety.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/20-TPR-1103-resource-Gboyega-Odubanjo.pdf

There is Joy Breaking Here: https://michaelmarksawards.org/awards-2021/shortlists2021/gboyega-odubanjo/

World Parent: https://readwildness.com/20/odubanjo-world

Classified: https://www.spreadtheword.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/STW-Runaways-Gboyega-Odubanjo-v4-201021.pdf (scroll down)

Holy Roller / I / Poem with Drums: https://www.tentacularmag.com/issue3a/gboyega-odubanjo

And finally, a great performance of a great poem, though hard to watch right now:

[Poem here: https://inksweatandtears.co.uk/archive/gboyega-odubanjos-obit-a-timely-pick-of-the-month-for-october-2018/]

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You can read a family statement and donate to a community fundraiser in support of the establishment of the Gboyega Odubanjo Foundation for low-income Black writers here:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/gboyega-odubanjo-beloved-son-brother-friend