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Gbenga Adesina, a Nigerian poet and essayist, is the inaugural Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Black Global and Diasporic Poetry at the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University. He received his master’s of fine arts from New York University, where he was mentored by Yusef Komunyakaa. More about this author >
In Gbenga Adesina’s debut book of poems, an exploration of exile, voyages, and spiritual odysseys, we encounter figures embarking on journeys haunted by history—a son keeps dreaming he carried his dead father across the sea; a young Black father, tired of fear and breathlessness, travels with his son in search of the ghost of James Baldwin—to Paris, the south of France, Turkey, and Senegal to investigate his ancestral roots; and finally, a group of immigrants on small boats in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea sing in order not to drown, in a stunning sequence that invokes the middle passage. Adesina’s Death Does Not End at the Sea explores the complexity of elusive citizenship, an immigrant’s brokenhearted prayer for a new beginning, a chorus of elegies, and a cosmic love song between the living and the dead.
