Songbook: Collected Works / Joshua Idehen

Poetry Book Society Recommendation Winter 2024

We know where we came from. We came on boats, on planes, with passports and on the back of trucks. We worked three jobs and sent the money back home. We brought our motherland to life in our kitchens, our bedrooms, our churches, our songs, our dance, our sex, our pidgin, our patois…

Joshua Idehen’s collected works has been a long time coming. Songbook comprises verses from Mercury-nominated and MOBO-winning albums by Sons of Kemet and The Comet Is Coming, alongside watershed poems of spoken word legend, newly captured in book form. From Poejazzi and Benin City to a string of supreme collaborations, Idehen’s impact resonates far and wide across the landscapes of poetry and jazz/electronica. Cross-examining colonialism, masculinity, mental health and ways of healing, his writing is an essential provocation, a diasporic dance, a comedy roast, an intervention, a cannonball from which no one is safe, least of all himself.

“One of the most important writers working today.” Dr Obaro Ejimiwe aka Ghostpoet

“Joshua Idehen is in the tradition of Gil Scott-Heron. Like Gil, his recorded poems withstand the requirements of the page in their form, orchestration and impact. This could easily have been called Battle Song Book for the way it inspires the reader to rally against the wrongs, historical and present, of this world. Songbook feels like a large, black, tattered flag, running at enemy hordes, screaming, It’s on.” Roger Robinson

“The griot has committed to the page, and it’s like watching a good man turn himself inside out. Idehen gives us his whole heart: furious, loving, dark, tender, uncompromising, funny, fuck-you lyrics. It’s a work that cares about you and the world. I promise, a few Idehen songs before bedtime will leave you feeling revolutionary…” Leone Ross

“A writer whose poems leap from the page. A melody we tune ourselves to, whether in struggle or liberation. The ask is to be present, through it all.” Yomi Ṣode

“The poet laureate of UK jazz.” Kate Hutchinson, The Guardian

OUT 24TH OCTOBER 2024

ISBN: (Paperback) 978-1-913268-60-2 (ePub) 978-1-913268-61-9