A Little Resurrection

by Selina Nwulu

A Little Resurrection is the debut full-length collection from acclaimed poet Selina Nwulu.

In these reflections on being and blackness, informed by empathy and intellectual curiosity, Nwulu melds the golden light of Senegal with the harsh winds of Yorkshire. Here, blackness itself is complicated, and the resonances of being are extended to offer an image of the self in a state of flux – a fugitive spirit battling the harm of erasure.

In its profound joy, all the more powerful for being hard-won, A Little Resurrection heralds the branching out of an important trajectory in Anglophone poetry.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

64 pages, Paperback

Published October 13, 2022

Reviews

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fine collection of poetry from Selina Nwulu.

Some of it righteously political and some of it personal. But aren't the political and the personal just two sides of the same coin?

The issue I always have when reviewing poetry is that I haven't the academic foundation to analyse it as literature. I have my untrained mind which loves words used effectively and cleverly and I have my heart, which is moved by words and phrases. So, any analysis I have comes from that.

Selina Nwulu knows how to hit hard and she knows how to hit soft. But she knows how to hit. Quoting a single line of poetry torn from all its context is a foolish thing to do but this line - "Jimmy, finally an American, great again" - hits hard. As does "Oh! she whispered as she opened the curtains, tray in hand, to find us scattered around him, debris of a quiet bomb."

I had recently read Sonnets for Albert by Anthony Joseph and that collection would make a fine double bill with this. The themes of grief, of race and racism, of colonialism, and of family connect them. Grief runs through both books. Both are Bloomsbury publications too.

Clive James once wrote, "All I can do is turn a phrase until it catches the light." That's no bad achievement and Selina Nwulu sparkles with phrases like that.

[Lo (kipepeo) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. I have no words for this poetry collection. But here’s my best attempt: beautiful, haunting, painful and heartbreaking. I loved this so so much.

**5 stars**

[Mina H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Selina Nwulu is a writer of Nigerian heritage. A little resurrection is her debut full-length collection and her poems are about race, politics, deportation, spaces.

She was Young Poet Laureate for London in 2015-6 and also shortlisted for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize 2019.

[Gianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nwulu offers gifts of grief, looking, seeing, saying what others might fear to mumble. From the first poem, I felt what I held was heavy with intention, laden with truths. Upon arriving at Replay, I realized I had encountered the poem years ago through a podcast and I had downloaded it to replay it many times myself, it having plucked a chord that resonated within me. My gratitude to Nwulu for this collection of poems, for all the poems contain, reflect back, ask me to consider and see.

[Siobhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Little Resurrection is the first full-length collection by Nwulu, with poems that explore places and spaces, race, and navigating your position in the world. Some of the poems form parts of sequences woven through the collection, like the 'Conversations at the Bus Stop' and 'Repatriation' poems, and others explore various facets of similar things, like the loss of a parent.

I particularly enjoyed a lot of the imagery throughout the poems, with lots of lines and ideas that really stick with you (for example, in 'My Dad's Jacket Lives On in a Pop-Up Bar in Shoreditch' and the final line of 'Half-Written Love Letter'), and carefully sketched out human relationships like the "what if" of 'Never Mine'. The engagement with space, particularly the modern reality of living in a city in 'We Have Everything We Need' also stands out, bringing in the global and climate impacts of having city convenience and inconvenience, and also the idea of which spaces are for who which runs throughout many of the poems.

[Lewis Isbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

!

[Maria AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.3/5⭐️
Maravillosos poemas sobre el duelo, la familia, el racismo, las injusticias sociales y todas las implicaciones políticas y personales de vivir entre dos mundos como hija de inmigrantes.

[Jeremy Tabensky · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was very passive? But the pithy punctuated stuff was nice.

[Ashling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant.

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“If it isn’t clear in the living, / where do the dead belong?” A Little Resurrection, Selina Nwulu’s debut full-length collection, is as concerned with burials as it is with resurrections, and this includes the self, its wants: “I buried the words I should have given you / years ago, only visit the grave in the panic of night, / barefoot and lonely”. The self is buried, Black and “othered” bodies are buried, truth is buried — Nwulu first lays bare the act of burial, and then rolls the stone away, the poem a resurrecting act which brings back and affirms these bodies, and their lives, souls. This is especially clear in poems like ‘Repatriation I’ and ‘Repatriation II’, both being concerned with well-known acts of systemic violence and its impact on foreign selves, even posthumously. Nwulu’s poems recognise the divinity of suffering bodies, generally ignored: “Blackness, stigmata never touching holiness, outcast to purity.” There’s the furiously funny prose poem ‘We’re Not Hiring Many Black Girls This Season’, and the intimately beautiful ‘13.42’, and the deceptive light of ‘Another Lens’: “so much joy. Overflowing, / messy and warm” in an oftentimes dark poem. Other standouts take the form of ‘Lips’, ‘Back from the Dead’, the title poem, the achingly beautiful closer ‘Another Country’, and the hilarious but also excruciating ‘Softboi Columbus’ (I wrote in my notes: hahaha but also fucking hell). Nwulu resists bleakness though, insisting “I will not make their horror / your pantomime”, so defiantly hopeful: “what a gift to be your own church”; “your language is my language, / is a bridge that is broken”; “Now I leave all my doors open, waiting for my return.”

[Olivia-Savannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Selina's poetry is versatile. So many different styles of poems, and yet they feel collected and complement each other.

Key themes of the poems being racism, grief, death and revival, searching for your identity.

When I finished a poem I found myself nodding along, or thinking, or stewing in my emotions. I couldn't race through this. I sat with every poem individually and had to let it process because it was that striking.

I will reread this in the future to annotate all over these on second encounter. I want more of her poetry already.

[Ade A. Wahab · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a sentimental collection of poems, I think. The poems tell us a story of the complexity of being black and being a woman. It contains a political view of the writer and personal matters she wants to express.
My favorite poem from this book is titled Dandelion. It is short but hurtful, telling us about grieves and relief simultaneously.

[Jungian.Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely revolutionary.

Full Review soon

[Charlotte Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

*3.5

[Shannon (That's So Poe) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a fantastic poetry collection. The poems reach deep and are full of emotions, touching on grief, anger, identity, and displacement. Highly recommended!

[deer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Today I am grateful to be alone and to be deeply loved,
the former does not cancel the latter.
In the end, when I scatter wide the pieces of my life,
I will honour it, feast upon the bitter and the sweet, and give thanks.