Adam

by Gboyega Odubanjo

SHORTLISTED FOR THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE

SHORTLISTED FOR THE JHALAK POETRY PRIZE

SHORTLISTED FOR THE JOHN POLLARD FOUNDATION INTERNATIONAL POETRY PRIZE

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MICHAEL MURPHY PRIZE


The debut collection of poetry by Gboyega Odubanjo.


'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.' - Gboyega Odubanjo


Haunted by the discovery of the remains of a young Black boy in the River Thames in London, 2001, Gboyega Odubanjo's Adam builds from the Genesis myth and from Yoruba culture to examine with an unflinching eye the disappearance of a child and its implication for all Black lives, and for the society in which we live.


Gboyega Odubanjo (1996-2023) was born and raised in East London. He is the author of three poetry While I Yet Live (Bad Betty Press), Two stops short of Barking (The Alternative School of Economics) and Aunty Uncle Poems (The Poetry Business/New Poets List), winner of the Michael Marks Poetry Award and an Eric Gregory Award. A Barbican Young Poet alumnus, Odubanjo was an editor at bath magg journal and Bad Betty Press, co-chair of Magma and a member of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, after which he later became a Roundhouse Resident Artist. He was a creative-writing tutor on the Creative Future IMPART programme, supporting writers from underrepresented backgrounds. His UK garage single 'LDN GRLS' with Love Remain is out with the Sony Music UK label Black Butter Records. The Gboyega Odubanjo Foundation for low-income Black writers was established in 2023 to honour his legacy. Adam, published posthumously in 2024, is his debut poetry collection.


'What a voice he has - fresh, worn, elegiac, present. If ever a volume offered a story about water, loss, migration and every last one of us, Adam does.' Andrew O'Hagan, Observer


'Here is a heavy, mystical, humorous and lyrical Black British voice that will live forever.' Raymond Antrobus


'Adam is a watery chorus, spirited and kinetic. These poems crackle with love and risk . . . Odubanjo was a singular voice in British poetry, one which will endure.' Momtaza Mehri


'With Adam, it feels like Gboyega Odubanjo excavates traditions to create a new world with a language and texture completely of its own.' Tife Kusoro


'Adam is an anticipated debut, from a poet rooted in community. A poet whose name and charm will continue to live in our hearts and minds for generations.' Yomi Sode


'An extraordinary and arresting book.' Kate Kellaway, Observer


'A monumental polyphonic odyssey . . . Reading this collection is an experience of exquisite heartbreak.' Oluwaseun Olayiwola, Guardian


'Odubanjo's art was - and is, in the never-ending presentness of his book - an art of the impossibly perfected everyday . . . Adam grants its readers extraordinary perceptions throughout - it's a light, keeping visible a story too likely to fade from view, and making more visible a poet who must be read.' Shane McCrae, Daily Telegraph


'Gboyega Odubanjo's posthumous debut, Adam (Faber), took the story of the torso of a Black boy found in the Thames in 2001 and explored its symbolism for the poet's youth in a London where "the streets are paved with cousins

Genres: Poetry

86 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2024

Reviews

[Jess Esa · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can feel the river running right through this collection and sinking beneath your skin. Profound. RIP Gboyega, you gentle soul.

[nadia]

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

[Wouter · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of poems was written after the discovery of a torso of a Black boy in the river Thames in Central London in 2021, a boy as young as four to seven years old and named Adam by the police officers who investigated his case. Gboyega Odubanjo reflects on the boy’s tragic life and death, ruminates about the boy's family, about Black lives more generally and society at large while taking inspiration from the Bible story of Genesis and from Yoruba culture.

Tragically, the author Gboyega Odubanjo himself drowned in 2023, which adds extra meaning to these poems given the theme of water and drowning in this collection.

My favourite poems were Bronze Adam of Benin and Against Resting in Peace.

[Jess Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heartbreaking and heartstopping and chilling and warming and swift and lasting 😢 rest in peace Gboyega you were such a seer

[Dayi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best poetry book I've read in a very long time

[Lewis Isbell]

Adam

[Kelly-Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly original.

[Joe Skilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

help me in how many rivers are there boys
washing their hair and swimming
and seeing themselves for the first time
resting their eyes and are they not the same
waters if i keep going will i not eventually
find you on a bank waiting your toes smoothing the ripples
your hand out bonjour je m’apelle

[Nic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Odubanjo uses the biblical creation story (myth if you’re agnostic) as the premise for his first (and sadly, only) poetry collection. Like the river that the eponymous Adam was found in, the book gushes the readers through grimy sooty water to remind us of how we are all connected through this anonymous body.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bright bright poems.

[Jayant Kashyap · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fine collection dwelling between life and death.

[Aimee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gosh. What a powerful reading experience. This is a book about the empathy, community, and pain. It’s about the idea of how can we be a society, when the vulnerable suffer. It’s about voice, giving it space to heard. It hurts. This posthumous debut is sharp, touching, and thought provoking. I am sure Odubanjo would be proud to see this collection published.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rarely read poetry but this completely persuaded me that I actually do love it when it's done as well as this collection. Odubanjo writes with such wit and the rhythm carries throughout all poems. My personal favourites were genesis, a story about water and man so would highly recommend looking them up. So heartbreaking to learn how odubanjo passed away and very chilling to see the links between his death and that of the unknown child in the thames 25 yrs ago that is the centrepoint of this collection in particular

[meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

heartbreaking and utterly beautiful - what a talent

[Juliano · Rating 4 out of 5]

“adam at the very centre — neither of paradise nor of earth — neither dead nor living but in fact actually found dead in the thames and actually the first man to live.” Between Genesis and the apocalypse lands Gboyega Odubanjo’s posthumously published poetry collection Adam, which was on its third draft when Odubanjo tragically passed away last year. In 2001, “the torso of a black boy was discovered in the River Thames, […] 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.” This is the context of Odubanjo’s poems, which are haunted by this discovery, and build from the Adam of Genesis into Yoruba culture and an exploration of Blackness. There are many excellent poems in the collection: ‘The Lyric Adam’, ‘A Potted History of East’, ‘Rewilding’, ‘You: The Many Adams of Adam’, and the brilliant ‘The Drums Sing of Adam’. In ‘Crown’, I enjoyed the thoughts on hair, how “generations have come and / gone and still it holds. this immaculate empire without stray.” And in ‘The Garden’, the stark declaration that “this is not our country this is not a country it’s a burned CD and a tracklist we’ve written ourselves.” In all I enjoyed the urgency and the emphasis on life, on living it and acknowledging it: “do not die again / the child we searched for / the child who returned home / the child who became the home / wait / all the names have been exhausted / there is nothing left to dig a grave / wait and enjoy life / wait and bury me / your touch is life / your gapped teeth please me / the story is yours”.

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

The titular Adam was the name given to the body of a Black boy, aged between 4 and 7, who was found floating in the Thames in 2001. This collection of poems is an exploration of who Adam was and who he might have become, and an expression of grief for how this boy died and was cast aside, and more broadly, for all the children who are destroyed, lost or hurt by conflicts and decisions entirely outside of their control. The grief that permeates this collection is made particularly poignant as the reader knows that Gboyega Odubanjo died in 2023 at the age of only 27. Reading this, it is impossible not to think of his vibrant life, and to mourn his loss. Adam is a fitting showcase of Odubanjo's remarkable poetic voice, and his imagination, empathy, and skill as a poet. This is a remarkable debut collection.

[Callum MH · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inspired by the horrific, unsolved murder case of the titular ‘Adam’, the name police gave to a boy whose torso was discovered in the Thames in 2001, likely a victim of human trafficking and a ritual sacrifice. Tragically, too, the poet, Odubanjo, died a few years back in an accidental drowning. His collection is an at times heart-wrenchingly elegiac meditation on the nameless, the missing; the pulse of the river can be heard through its prosody; the place where the body was found and wherein the Yoruba culture and the Genesis creation myth interflow. As well as this, some poems explore growing up Nigerian in London, alongside some surprising eddies of humour along the way.

[Alice Brooker · Rating 5 out of 5]

The words themselves feel like rain: full and always falling. There is so much meaning to unpack in Adam, and each time I retrace a line I am finding something new running up my spine. There is an ocean of feeling, yet it sprays out so sensitively on the page that its understanding becomes phonetic, reachable. I am in deep blue awe of this collection.

Favourite poems:
A Story About Water
Function
You: The Many Adams of Adam
To the High Commissioner
Against Resting in Peace

[Anne Brooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection has a lot of energy and some very good individual poems. However, it doesn't gel as a collection and there are a number of poems which are obscure and needed a much stronger editor to make them sing. The idea behind the poetry is good but it's not given full expression here. Interesting but not inspiring.

[Jake Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect.

[Goodreeds User · Rating 5 out of 5]

🥲

[Booklover87]

rip great gboyega

[leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

heartbreaking. tragic. lyrical. language used in the most careful and gorgeous way. thoroughly enjoyed

[jesse slater · Rating 5 out of 5]

“did you ever swim in it or maybe float” (p. 35)

[Georgie May · Rating 5 out of 5]

RIP Gboyega, a tragic and beautiful collection

[Noémie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the ones about water the most, personal preference!

[Nicky Crabb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moving debut poetry collection published posthumously following Gboyega’s death in 2023. Brilliant exploration of masculinity, race, inspired by the body of a black boy in the Thames.

[Shuchi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely gutted

[Eric Boyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Came away with a feeling that Adam gave birth to the 21st century as Jack the Ripper did the 20th

[Amelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5