Strange Beach
Poems
Catapult · Print & ebook · January 21, 2025
A debut poetry collection wrangling the various selves we hold and perform—across oceans and within relationships—told through a queer, Nigerian-American lens At times surreal, at times philosophical, the poems of Strange Beach demarcate a fiercely interior voice inside of queer Black masculinity.
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- Who it’s for
- These poems move through music, image, and intimate address to consider desire, masculinity, and selfhood.
- Themes
- Queer Black masculinity, Intimacy and relationships, Selfhood and desire
- Genres
- LGBTQ+ Poetry, African American Poetry, Love Poetry
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Start with this bookAbout this book
A debut poetry collection wrangling the various selves we hold and perform—across oceans and within relationships—told through a queer, Nigerian-American lens At times surreal, at times philosophical, the poems of Strange Beach demarcate a fiercely interior voice inside of queer Black masculinity. Oluwaseun’s speakers—usually, but not specified, as two men—move between watery landscapes, snowy terrains, and domestic conflicts.
Continue reading
Each poem proceeds by way of music and melody, allowing themes of masculinity, sex, parental relations, death, and love to conspire within a voice that prioritizes intimate address. In announcing their acquisition of the UK edition, after a three-way auction, Strange Beach was described as “a wrangling of the various selves we hold and perform – across oceans and within relationships – through a highly patterned and textual lyrical play: it is a deeply moving and philosophical tapestry.” Strange Beach often eschews meaning, preferring, in its deluge of images and emotions, to transmute messages straight to the mind to the reader. Oluwaseun’s poetic influences are clear: Claudia Rankine, Jorie Graham, Louise Gluck, Carl Phillips, Kevin Young, Hannah Sullivan, John Ashberry, and Ocean Vuong. Strange Beach is a searching collection where land and water, body and mind, image and abstraction, are in productive tension, leading to third ways of considering intimacy, selfhood, and desire.
Selves in Tension
These poems move through music, image, and intimate address to consider desire, masculinity, and selfhood.
Come here for
- A queer, Nigerian-American lens on intimacy and performed selves
- Images that travel between water, snow, body, and mind
Expect
- Surreal and philosophical turns rather than tidy meanings
- Themes of love, family, sex, and death held in lyrical tension
Where it sits
| LGBTQ+ Poetry | 97% |
|---|---|
| African American Poetry | 62% |
| Love Poetry | 46% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- African American Poetry
- LGBTQ+ Poetry
- Place Poetry
- Authors
- Oluwaseun Olayiwola
- Publisher
- Catapult
- Published
- January 21, 2025
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Queer Black masculinity · Intimacy and relationships · Selfhood and desire
- Reading lane
- African American Poetry