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Strange Beach: Poems
A debut poetry collection wrangling the various selves we hold and perform—across oceans and within relationships—told through a queer, Nigerian-American lensAt 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. 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 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 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.
96 pages, Paperback
Published January 21, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
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April 29, 2025Very cool that Fitzcarraldo are now publishing poetry (and the design is a mix between Fitzcarraldo-blue and their non-fiction white (I wonder if that says something about poetry?)), but it only reinforced the sad truth I already knew: I'm poetry stupid. I understood little of this collection. Sometimes I can at least glean some turns of phrase that move me, but not here. Actually, I liked "Crustacean"; that's all. Someone with a bigger brain would appreciate Olayiwola's work, I'm sure.
February 28, 2025
The first poetry bundle by Fitzcarraldo! Queer desire and the violence of love, being black in the world and a lot of aquatic themes dominate the poems
In its vibration, we, ourselves, are seen. To love what you cannot see or to see what you cannot love? Which is your problem?
Crustacean
Oluwaseun Olayiwola is definitely multi-talented, being an accomplished choreographer. I enjoyed the themes in the bundle, focusing on the queer experience and featuring aquatic themes, including beacons, waves, oceans full of corpses and off course the titular Strange Beach.
Sometimes I did have a feeling of what am I actually reading. Some of the later poems near the end that do little in terms of the face of the page but are more narratively oriented actually worked best for me. I would have like more of a thread connecting poems, but still a strong bundle: 3.5 stars, rounded down.
Faces with wishes stitched across them
like large quilts.
And the sunset, even from this high up,
tips down along the dark
outcome of sky. Immeasurable beauty
is immeasurable precisely
until it’s gone—
More Night
The soul fissuring
that wants to be summarized,
to be remembered as intangible
therefore fragile, an
inverted balloon,
or encrusted with the hard stone of dailiness,
weak at the knees like theory
Chlorine
Do not touch me now
—unless you
mean me
to open, open farther than
this beach and what
we endured here, has
already
opened me—Is it that
you think
I’d rather be anything else,
that we were gifted
the option to be anything
more, than
temporary.
Strange Beach
Change is a disease glimmering
invisibly
On Nataliya Goncharova’s Gathering Firewood
In its vibration, we, ourselves, are seen. To love what you cannot see or to see what you cannot love? Which is your problem?
Crustacean
Oluwaseun Olayiwola is definitely multi-talented, being an accomplished choreographer. I enjoyed the themes in the bundle, focusing on the queer experience and featuring aquatic themes, including beacons, waves, oceans full of corpses and off course the titular Strange Beach.
Sometimes I did have a feeling of what am I actually reading. Some of the later poems near the end that do little in terms of the face of the page but are more narratively oriented actually worked best for me. I would have like more of a thread connecting poems, but still a strong bundle: 3.5 stars, rounded down.
Faces with wishes stitched across them
like large quilts.
And the sunset, even from this high up,
tips down along the dark
outcome of sky. Immeasurable beauty
is immeasurable precisely
until it’s gone—
More Night
The soul fissuring
that wants to be summarized,
to be remembered as intangible
therefore fragile, an
inverted balloon,
or encrusted with the hard stone of dailiness,
weak at the knees like theory
Chlorine
Do not touch me now
—unless you
mean me
to open, open farther than
this beach and what
we endured here, has
already
opened me—Is it that
you think
I’d rather be anything else,
that we were gifted
the option to be anything
more, than
temporary.
Strange Beach
Change is a disease glimmering
invisibly
On Nataliya Goncharova’s Gathering Firewood
March 9, 2025
4.5 — How many steps between rest and defeat until the flame / is what it always was: a symbol / for where the slaughter ends. Red-blue pool / of drained life swirling / under, refusing purple, refusing memory's / tainted leakage—And passing through / the body like an event. When does it become trespass? / It's Tuesday. He is coming / over to demonstrate squirm's meaning: to writhe inside / the self. How even the bones tangle, country light / fading the room at the same angle / we had thought it departed—
March 19, 2025
There are a great many indicators suggesting this is a book of vast accomplishment. An exciting 3 way bidding war leading to the book's sale, the sheer pedigree of Fitzcarraldo Editions choosing it for their inaugural poetry subscription, and several reviews from intelligent readers over the moon about these poems. I'm at a loss, because for me nothing here stuck. I thought the diction was imprecise, even a little random at times, and the meaning behind this book as a whole was fleeting for me. Perhaps, no, certainly I am stuck within my own condition and though I liked a few of these poems (re: God, the titular Strange Beaches) the work itself, unfortunately, could not break me out. Perhaps one day I'll come around to Olayiwola but for now the impression I'm going away with is that it was full of violence and sudden vocabulary words like 'punctum' but that it didn't hold a lot of meaning for me.
November 2, 2025
3.5 - didn’t resonate with me fully, but I really liked the sequence of titular poems (‘Strange Beach’).
Sometimes the writing was really nice in a way that reminds me of Glück’s early work: conversational and simple but billowing with lush imagery. Like: “to think being swelled by tenor, by the soft lacquer / of beginnings, is to be safe from rust, / from necessary, because promised, wear.” But sometimes I was left scratching my head?
Sometimes the writing was really nice in a way that reminds me of Glück’s early work: conversational and simple but billowing with lush imagery. Like: “to think being swelled by tenor, by the soft lacquer / of beginnings, is to be safe from rust, / from necessary, because promised, wear.” But sometimes I was left scratching my head?
February 24, 2025
Who could have predicted that the Fitzcarraldo poetry list would be stellar???? God bless you 2025
September 29, 2025
Ik las de gedichten wel maar kon er helaas weinig bij voelen… Twee uitzonderingen hierop waren ‘Nymphs’ en ‘Ski’. (2,5)
September 18, 2024
I adored Strange Beach. This is why I read poetry. While poetry can encompass a variety of styles, intents, contents, etc,... to me- this is what poetry is supposed to be.
Strange Beach is a compilation of many unadulterated, emotional, and unashamedly queer poems that re-explained to me the world I should know in a creative and passionate way. I am not a poet, nor do I have the same way with words that Olayiwola does, so I know what I type won't properly describe how I appreciate his work. There were many lines that stuck with me while reading, but the quote that resonates with me the most is "he needs experience to mean something like in a novel". I personally struggle with this belief so much in my personal life. I read into things way too much, interpret things way more deeply than they were meant, and hold things too personally. While this is a quick line, I always appreciate when an author/poet is able to call on something I have personally felt or thought.
This is the first time I have read any of Olayiwola's work, and I look forward to reading more in the future. Thank you to NetGalley, Catapult, Counterpoint Press, and Soft Skull Press for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Strange Beach is a compilation of many unadulterated, emotional, and unashamedly queer poems that re-explained to me the world I should know in a creative and passionate way. I am not a poet, nor do I have the same way with words that Olayiwola does, so I know what I type won't properly describe how I appreciate his work. There were many lines that stuck with me while reading, but the quote that resonates with me the most is "he needs experience to mean something like in a novel". I personally struggle with this belief so much in my personal life. I read into things way too much, interpret things way more deeply than they were meant, and hold things too personally. While this is a quick line, I always appreciate when an author/poet is able to call on something I have personally felt or thought.
This is the first time I have read any of Olayiwola's work, and I look forward to reading more in the future. Thank you to NetGalley, Catapult, Counterpoint Press, and Soft Skull Press for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
January 24, 2025
a NEW new release. i loved it. i think it’s a beautiful unpacking of race, sex, queerness, and the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade in london and england. the metaphor is always an act of self portraiture, and strange beach paints a portrait with more questions than answers — this works for olayiwola but would not work for someone else.
June 16, 2025
I love mediocre poetry getting praise in the face of incomprehension. I'm a lover of difficult poetry. There's something indelible in a text that, even when confronted by a wall of text without apparent coherence of meaning, can be felt, like a texture, a surge of something not immediately expressible. Olayiwola's work rarely comes together in a manner that suggests that textural quality beyond the immediate. The themes seem clear: gay Black experience, messy familial relationships, the liberation and (willful) subjugation of erotic union, the limitations of bodily experience, identity as a fluid and boundless mistress, etc. But the language, while having moments of beauty or oddity, generally leans toward the tendencies of Carl Phillips' (who is named on the back) lesser poems: strong nouns that act as shortcuts rather than relying on a poetic register to examine the thing encapsulated too easily in a simple noun. The Jorie Graham/Claudia Rankine/Louise Gluck/John Ashbery comparisons do Olayiwola no favors.
September 2, 2025
this was very ok
October 28, 2025
so clever. so beautiful. i need to read it again and again forever.
March 21, 2025
I have mixed feelings about this collection. On the one hand, Oluwaseun Olayiwola clearly has a way with words, and there are a few shorter poems I truly enjoyed for the vividness of their depictions (“Coast” or “Beacon” for those who have read them, too). On the other hand, the symbolism becomes so strong at times that I have no clue what the poet actually means - a few poems also seem to have no other aim than to play with language itself, à la Oulipo, which is theoretically interesting but not particularly engaging. I was too often distracted from the page, finding more often than not that I did not particularly care how this or that poem ended.
February 16, 2025
A deft and impressive debut collection, very enthusiastically underlined. That being said, there's something of a green obviousness to some of the poems. Some further digging and descent into language would have done just the trick. 3.5 xx
July 17, 2025
Strange Beach
—unable to get from the underneath side of
the stones
that flank the sand, the body: blown
from every direction, into like a conch shell
where the echo of excess in extremis floods
the chamber
where once was a body willing to die inside of, longing—this
is the obsession, this transatlantic voyages
spread on the page
like an oil spill, the blue-and-black
arsenal of water hushing, inevitably, was it worth it?
Worth. It circles around you—
the increasing gap between the surface
of the water
and the stillness you entirely inhabit
so as to sink to the ocean floor: but properly
with no effect on velocity. Stingrays.
Desire: inseparability of light
and dark. How beautiful
you have been and are
giving your whole life to a pointless competition— (13)
Now
Then we're on the shore again.
The stars, from this angle, wet and shining.
Hiss of the wind stirring above us
in a music, drowned mouths—
He slides his hand into my city
and in my city
his hand
is disappeared. (79)
—unable to get from the underneath side of
the stones
that flank the sand, the body: blown
from every direction, into like a conch shell
where the echo of excess in extremis floods
the chamber
where once was a body willing to die inside of, longing—this
is the obsession, this transatlantic voyages
spread on the page
like an oil spill, the blue-and-black
arsenal of water hushing, inevitably, was it worth it?
Worth. It circles around you—
the increasing gap between the surface
of the water
and the stillness you entirely inhabit
so as to sink to the ocean floor: but properly
with no effect on velocity. Stingrays.
Desire: inseparability of light
and dark. How beautiful
you have been and are
giving your whole life to a pointless competition— (13)
Now
Then we're on the shore again.
The stars, from this angle, wet and shining.
Hiss of the wind stirring above us
in a music, drowned mouths—
He slides his hand into my city
and in my city
his hand
is disappeared. (79)
September 17, 2024
At some point, I will stop disclaiming my lack of knowledge about poetry. But today is not that day.
I am developing a love for poetry. A longing for it. But I do not pretend to understand it always. I did not study it in school. I do not write my own poems. And yet, I reach for poetry constantly to help me make sense of the world.
Strange Beach is at once mystical and earthy. Sometimes the language is lyrical. Sometimes it is a gut punch. Some poems are ripped through with heavy meaning. And sometimes I had to sit with a poem, re-read it, and sit with it again to get my bearings.
I enjoyed Strange Beach. It is at moments joyous. At moments dark. It is queer. And searching. Longing and settled in the weight of this temporal plane. It is a worthwhile collection that I think you'll return to.
Support Bookish and preorder Strange Beach (for Jan 2025 release) here: https://bookshop.org/a/4334/978159376...
I am developing a love for poetry. A longing for it. But I do not pretend to understand it always. I did not study it in school. I do not write my own poems. And yet, I reach for poetry constantly to help me make sense of the world.
Strange Beach is at once mystical and earthy. Sometimes the language is lyrical. Sometimes it is a gut punch. Some poems are ripped through with heavy meaning. And sometimes I had to sit with a poem, re-read it, and sit with it again to get my bearings.
I enjoyed Strange Beach. It is at moments joyous. At moments dark. It is queer. And searching. Longing and settled in the weight of this temporal plane. It is a worthwhile collection that I think you'll return to.
Support Bookish and preorder Strange Beach (for Jan 2025 release) here: https://bookshop.org/a/4334/978159376...
March 20, 2025
Favorite poem — “:re God”
To you I bow down my thousand tongues, confess the shadowed case of my mind, some would call this a lie; some just living, and still some, necessary to heaven, its sacred, swollen balloon-edge — how would you know otherwise who to send to hell, who forgets their demons like an old telephone number — I did my time, hallowed my attention. In church I lifted my artery of repentance like boys conditioned to believe singing was solely an expulsionary practice. In giving praise you could not return, my mouth blistered into locusts, every dark orifice turning into mirrors for worship.
It is in this self-sufficiency I can admit, disabused of symbol — your preferred medium — I do love you. But men: Are we not your image?
Isn't the sword preening upwards from his pelvis the only tactic of sweet fellowship you've left us?
Here I declare your counsel, you for whom declarations of any sort are mere as children following loose kites into stopless winds—
To you I bow down my thousand tongues, confess the shadowed case of my mind, some would call this a lie; some just living, and still some, necessary to heaven, its sacred, swollen balloon-edge — how would you know otherwise who to send to hell, who forgets their demons like an old telephone number — I did my time, hallowed my attention. In church I lifted my artery of repentance like boys conditioned to believe singing was solely an expulsionary practice. In giving praise you could not return, my mouth blistered into locusts, every dark orifice turning into mirrors for worship.
It is in this self-sufficiency I can admit, disabused of symbol — your preferred medium — I do love you. But men: Are we not your image?
Isn't the sword preening upwards from his pelvis the only tactic of sweet fellowship you've left us?
Here I declare your counsel, you for whom declarations of any sort are mere as children following loose kites into stopless winds—
November 7, 2025
I’m a recent devotee of the prestigious Fitzcarraldo Editions, and having bought a full set of books from them (both fiction and non-fiction), I was intrigued to also add their inaugural poetry collection from Oluwaseun Olayiwola. As a gay man, I was immediately interested too in a poetry collection that offered some exploration of queer love and sexual awakenings. Additionally, I have been in a bit of a poetry kick having read all of JRR Tolkien’s poetry, thoroughly enjoyed the poems of Fernando Pessoa, and having just finished What We Can Know, which has a strong poetry through line. With all that said, I ultimately found myself slightly disappointed with Strange Beach. Olayiwola seems to barely scratch the surface of exploration and relies on cliche imagery and sensations of the body itself. There are some outstanding poems here, but they are few and far between. A valiant effort but ultimately I found Strange Beach to be rather lackluster in its emotional resonance.
February 28, 2025
'the snow is a skin. Inside it, / violence'
'No one can follow you here / not having become something else.'
picked this up at random in a bookshop and I'm so glad I did!! wowieee this was so gorgeous. It deftly discusses the body as a porous thing, a landscape: family, growing up, race and queerness, all getting absorbed in like a wave into the sand of this very strange beach.
Hard to believe this is a debut honestly.
'No one can follow you here / not having become something else.'
picked this up at random in a bookshop and I'm so glad I did!! wowieee this was so gorgeous. It deftly discusses the body as a porous thing, a landscape: family, growing up, race and queerness, all getting absorbed in like a wave into the sand of this very strange beach.
Hard to believe this is a debut honestly.
January 23, 2025
I won a copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway. Unfortunately I just wasn’t a huge fan of the disjointed nature of most of the poems. A lot of times it evoked more confusion than any other sort of imagery. I did appreciate the queer and religious themes. My favorite poems were “My Mother Raised a Normal Man” and “Night on the Thames Path”. Thank you Soft Skull!
March 19, 2025
One of the best, most consistently compelling poetry collections I've ever read. I love what Olayiwola is able to say in this medium about the Atlantic passage, queer Black masculinity, and the natural world. I could see myself returning to this collection and even writing about it in grad school. A singular talent.
May 30, 2025
Enjoyed a lot of this, particularly the softer more relaxed poems and the queer (& pretty horny) ones. At times Olayiwola gets a bit caught up in his own language and in-meanings, but the moments where his style lands more than make up for these. Not as Rankine-esque as I was expecting but still a stunning first collection with some absolute gems.
August 20, 2025
There are moments of beauty in this collection and moments of reaching. I’m left feeling like I’ve peered at emotion through a window, and am still waiting to be let inside.
“And the sunset, even from this high up, / tips down along the dark / outcome of sky. Immeasurable beauty / is immeasurable precisely until it’s gone”
“And the sunset, even from this high up, / tips down along the dark / outcome of sky. Immeasurable beauty / is immeasurable precisely until it’s gone”
December 31, 2024
2 1/2. Probably being overly harsh, but Olayiwola indulges some of my least favorite writerly tics and undermines every great line with a dozen of self-conscious, capital-P poetry. Way too willfully opaque for my tastes, and not productively so.
January 26, 2025
A wonderful introduction to Olayiwola's Poetry. I am not one to delve to deep into poetry, but his poems were wonderfully written and engaging causing me to think and try to understand the perspective of others.
April 22, 2025
i felt like i was being washed ashore upon a strange beach, the place beautiful yet hard to fully grasp. this was my experience with the book; I didn't fully understand the aim of each poem or what was going on, but the language was gorgeous and I enjoyed my time there.
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May 3, 2025An ambitious debut collection of poetry that is at once expansive and intimate. If in a bookshop, read 'Nymphs' (page. 45) and 'Poem' (page. 49), my two favourite poems from the collection, for a glimpse into his work.
April 3, 2025
Landscape as body and body as landscape, an incredible collection!
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June 24, 2025I don’t think I understood like 98% of these poems.
August 10, 2025
So beautiful
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews