Thank you for these reviews, Jeremy. As you say, there is the loss of all that Odubanjo might have written. This could also be said of the young poet Kathryn Bevis who died of cancer earlier this year. Seren managed to publish her first full-length collection 'The Butterfly House' just before her death. The poems in the first section 'After', all written, I think, after her diagnosis, make an extraordinary group and, reading them, I thought they placed her amongst the greats. They are so full of life - and love. The long poem 'Everyone will be there' (first published in the TLS) is especially glorious. It's an imagined 'parting party from this world' in which, for instance, 'There'll be nettle. Margie will plant / on my yoke the oak she grew from an acorn. / John will strew pear blossom, queen's crown, / ragged robin; Vicky will wreathe silverweed / cinquefoil blown backwards until it gleams.' It's a tour de force.
Thank you for these reviews, Jeremy. As you say, there is the loss of all that Odubanjo might have written. This could also be said of the young poet Kathryn Bevis who died of cancer earlier this year. Seren managed to publish her first full-length collection 'The Butterfly House' just before her death. The poems in the first section 'After', all written, I think, after her diagnosis, make an extraordinary group and, reading them, I thought they placed her amongst the greats. They are so full of life - and love. The long poem 'Everyone will be there' (first published in the TLS) is especially glorious. It's an imagined 'parting party from this world' in which, for instance, 'There'll be nettle. Margie will plant / on my yoke the oak she grew from an acorn. / John will strew pear blossom, queen's crown, / ragged robin; Vicky will wreathe silverweed / cinquefoil blown backwards until it gleams.' It's a tour de force.
Thanks for recommending this, Moniza -- those are beautiful lines, with their weaving of rhymes. I'll be reading more.