Sometimes we think of archives as pertaining only to the past, but I often find that they speak just as profoundly to our current moment. This is all the more true with Black archives, which can remain elusive today—a lost recipe, an erased neighborhood, a forgotten name. We need the jazz of the archives, speaking to life’s improvisations and otherwise lost moments—not to mention the archives’ blues, taking pain and transforming it, if not into pleasure then into a song of suffering in order to inch beyond it. Like such rich music, archives evoke the ever-present.
The poems of the British-Nigerian poet and editor Gboyega Odubanjo offer an archive of loss and, unfortunately, echo his own. Odubanjo’s work came to my attention only after his untimely death, in August, 2023—when he disappeared from a cultural festival that he was to perform at and was found dead several days later. He was twenty-seven. Almost a year after this tragedy that no words can repair, Faber & Faber is bringing out Odubanjo’s début full-length collection, “Adam,” which, like his three prior chapbooks (or pamphlets, as they are typically called in the U.K.), draws on a fount of stories and soundscapes to create a unique, indelible idiom. His friend and fellow-poet Raymond Antrobus—who first alerted me that there was work yet unpublished—wrote, after Odubanjo’s death, “So many of us loved you & knew your brilliance, we were waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.”
The excerpts from “Adam” that follow evince the vibrancy of Odubanjo’s poetry, his generational gravitas. As the author’s prefatory note indicates, the book centers on the discovery, in 2001, of an unidentified Black boy’s remains in the River Thames. The poems are remarkable for their weaving together Genesis, Yoruba culture, newscasts, “The Waste Land,” Black Britishisms, and apocalyptic weather in lyric tension and testimony. Writing of this child’s “death by water,” Odubanjo conjures past and present horrors facing the young, the Black, the vulnerable in our midst. Yet he also pays tribute to the perseverance—even amid a hostile or indifferent world—of community, ritual, and the creative spirit.
“What comes next cannot without a story of water and offering. The sun shines and we gather because the river allows it.” Odubanjo’s extraordinary words shine on, their incantations reaching for the divine.
On 21 September 2001, the torso of a black boy was discovered in the River Thames, near Tower Bridge in central London, clothed only in an orange pair of girls’ shorts. Given the name “Adam” by police officers, the unidentified boy was between four and eight years old. What comes next cannot without a story of water and offering. The sun shines and we gather because the river allows it. Na from clap dem dey enter dance. We enter with, and as, Adam.
Genesis
then god said let me make man in my image
man in my likeness man like me
man like light and man like dark
let man nyam and chop whatever be good
god said give man arm to skank leg to shake
tongue and chest to speak with
give man cash to spray put man’s face on it
said give man sea and sky and trees
and zones one to six on the oyster so man can see it
now man said rah swear down
man said show me
A Potted History of East
in the beginning.
it was a gush of us and we came from all over.
life was a bottle of nuts. one room and it was decent.
kept the cardamom in the cupboard above the bagels.
sixpence i’d make on an alright day. then independence came.
then war. then war. took me and my brothers.
the women built an estate for our ghosts. we manufactured fords
and drove them to the city gates demanding to be let in.
back then it was simple. sure we weren’t squeaky clean
but we were easy. always punch up we said. no point
nicking some bloke’s ped when the factory owner’s balling
in his four-door. but then a sweet one makes you settle down a bit.
landlord gets the hump so you find another room.
store the polenta next to the cassava flour. get the jobs
where you can. someone’s left their lamb leg in the pub again.
is this where eden is. where the sun rises.
developers calling it barcelona on thames now. council say
dagenham leo is alive and well. it’s cold as chips
but the ice cream van is still going off and we’re laughing.
we never unpacked.
so far east it’s west to another man. no bells here.
still we move. almost back where we left now.
Rewilding
it was the rainy season so it rained. the old man snored. these times the river like a boy was either missing or was everywhere you looked. in the east it was everywhere because they had convinced themselves it didn’t exist. newbuilds and roundabouts existed. the river was just a story they thought. so they planned their journeys to the minute not knowing where they had come from. but it rained so there was rain and because the people had forgotten the river had to retell its story. it said before anything there was water and there was water. on one side you. on the other side you. the people mistook this for a riddle. each claiming a side for themselves. the river welcoming the people in their entirety. taking in them the clothes on their backs all that they clung to.
Breaking
looks like it’ll be a rainy week ahead thank you now the body
of an unidentified boy aged between four and seven
was in the river for up to ten days before a passer by
noticed african boy’s stomach included extracts
of calabar bean and flecks of gold expert at kew gardens
says headless limbless boy likely to be nigerian
growing number have spread throughout the world coming up
goat arrested for armed robbery prime minister’s response breaking
male torso boy five or six said to be somebody’s
son boy assigned most appropriate acceptable name
after long deliberation thought to have been in river ten days
appeal made to family of girls’ shorts boy’s body
walking man who spotted adam to be offered counselling
suspicious thames river boy behavior should be reported
to authorities in other news
Àbíkú Adam
we called him the beginning. we begged that he stay but
he didn’t hear word. instead he came and went for the first
and repeated time and when he returned he was two halves
of a gourd longing to flesh. each time the cuts were the surgical same.
there are some who claim they saw him walk on water some
who swear he floated. sometime after the war he arrived
one by one into the homes of the victors playing on a
thumb piano singing his miserable life how lonely it was
until one day in the market he saw one miserable as he
and followed him into a silk tree where were gathered
children—for he too was a child—all with his exact scars
and foibles besides themselves trading deaths like marbles.
Adam’s Law
from the twenty-first day of september two thousand and one
every person born within the ague shall be a citizen any person who was a subject or alien
if he is of excellent character
has sufficient knowledge of one or two idiolects shall become a happy man
state brigadish shall have no responsibility thereof
for this world go start subject to the provisions
the underground wahala
every person born within this geographical expression infrastructural el dorado
we all sing together freely and sardonically and lugubriously reh teh teh
we all sing
the teacher schoolgirl schoolboy
let’s get down in the cankerous tribalism who be teacher in the malodorous saga cum gargantuan gaga
we all mishmash
me and you no need dey for same category
the qualifications of citizenship therefore are
it is to be obtained by means of fraud
we to be compos mentis reh teh teh
political hallelujah boys
and let us think say for the reference therein to the veritable bugaboo
the english language must be pooh pooh-ed quod erat demonstrandum reh teh teh
let’s wallow in the bluest dye conceal all material fact
every person recognized in this interpose this democracy this demonstration of craze this economic
quagmire this cataleptic shall on this date
Should You Return
just be sending the money and the land will be here waiting for you
the price the builder gave you is not a serious price unless you don’t want joy
if you don’t like the way the sun shines in the morning we can bring you a new one
the local guys will say you should pay tax but we can sort that one out
you want everything included school hospital transport we can build
there’s nothing like government policeman no dey for center everything we can do
if anyone should try to rob you believe me the smoke will clear before you hear sound
if you want the house to be a cure a meal an ocean we can manage
there is space for you your children their children their concubines their ghosts
when you are coming let us know the diesel will be in the generator
the guinness will be cooking the family you don’t know they will come and eat
and only when they are full will they remember that the rain has finished
This is drawn from “Adam.”
