(ARC received for review via Netgalley)

This is one of the most unusual poetry collections I've ever read, in both good and bad ways. I loved the ease with which Gbalajobi writes and uses rhythm, as well as his imagery - I can't put my finger on it, but a lot of the poems here reminded me quite a lot of the translated Cavafy I've read before, or some of Catullus' less raunchy poems.

Some of the lines, like this one:

'My heart is filled with cobwebs
(that’s what happens to unoccupied spaces)'

were so wonderful that I would have liked to have had a paperback copy to underline them. There's a lot of humour in here, too, and myriad pop culture references which helped to ground the collection in the here and now, although I do wonder if the poet relied a little too heavily on familiarity with those to set the tone and mood; as someone who doesn't like Lana del Rey, I didn't fully appreciate any of the poems which relied on her music specifically to evoke atmosphere, but that's probably on me.

But then, there were lines like:

'Our hips match the rhythm of Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road –
You are a cowgirl riding a shotgun.'

which just seemed like a sort of ludicrous image, and when I got to:

'my body knew before you told me,
“Two months. it’s Dave’s…”'

I found that line so bizarre and unintentionally hilarious, like I was watching a telenovela or an episode of Eastenders, that it jarred me out of the poem completely. Those were the two worst offenders - the rest of the poems didn't suffer for them.

The strongest poems here are the ones about racism ('Your Sin is Your Skin, Boy' was probably my favourite - the rhythm in that one made me want to hear the poet read it out loud) and love, or perhaps more accurately obsession. I liked the variety of tones, too; there's as many joyful poems here as there are mournful ones, and it made for an interesting read, although I do also think it could stand to be beefed up a bit more as it's a very short collection.

Not my new favourite, but a really interesting style and I'm glad I read it.