Gboyega Odubanjo’s debut marks the start of an exciting career. His is a voice that draws you in, intrinsically contemporary, grounded in something timeless. With an enviable lightness of touch, he explores themes such as race, mortality and the fallibility of faith—‘i believing foolish in the heat of it / assumed sweat was communion / fever god given’. The poems in While I Yet Live beat to a luxurious musicality; prayers and confessions, these are poems to read to yourself aloud.
“Who is Gboyega Odubanjo? That’s the question this sharp, lyrical pamphlet keeps asking, but don’t expect to get a straight answer. Begin with ‘OBIT.’ — an instant classic — and keep looking. Like O’Hara, Odubanjo goes on his nerve: looking really cool when he lets his arm hang out the passenger side, erasing Enoch Powell to ‘all but come’, hearing drums and more drums, compiling playlists for uncommitted crimes, going to bed ‘with all the strangers who got my name right’. Reader, there has never been a better time to become a Gboyega Odubanjo fan.” Jeremy Noel-Tod
“I’ve had the pleasure of working with Gboyega through COAT Sessions for six months. I read Gboyega’s work and I am taken back by his storytelling and rawness in his use of language. In Gboyega I see a writer that is fully aware of his surroundings. A writer that details his poems vividly and unapologetically.” Yomi Sode