Aunty Uncle Poems

Gboyega Odubanjo

• Publisher: The Poetry Business
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781912196562
• eBook ISBN:
  9781912196579
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

This is a documentation of all the aunties, uncles, cousins (by blood or by choice) for whom London has become home. Here we have arrived, or found ourselves – here we try to belong.

'With Aunty Uncle Poems, Gboyega Odubanjo cements himself as one of the most exciting poetry talents writing right now. These are poems filled with wit and vulnerability, and movement and musicality, that take us to church before we've even realised they've turned us into believers. Dancing around familial bonds, the streets of the inner city, and the music and conversation that soundtracks both, the poems are less a mediation and more a meditation on the connections that make us – if you're one of 'us' – who we are' – Bridget Minamore, author of Titanic (Out-Spoken Press) and co-founder of Critics of Colour.

Drake Equation

i’m running out of data on the train everyone is feeling particularly

lonely it isn’t enough

everyone & me   ear plugged & stirring   is listening to something

considering charts & cadence of feet bounce it is likely we are listening

to drake

drake says   sometimes i feel good sometimes i don’t

he knows that until he bursts from carbs or cliché we will love him

always drake has been on our minds now for some fourhundredtwenty

weeks at least everyone & drake is wearing t-shirts with drake lyrics

printed on them we are signing love letters and suicide notes with

drakeisms   it isn’t enough wake up mumbling something drake drool

on our pillow wonder where else still we can find traces of him

we’re only now just learning

drake says   more life more everything

always more   feeding every hour

on the hour

all the amenities

the biggest residential pool

on the planet

everybody in it

my critics & my friends

fat happy house

my children &

everybody loving me

the pictures

portrait of the artist

eating   portrait

of the artist in

the biggest residential

pool on the planet

fat & happy

drake’s ear is to the zeitgeist   listening for something out there

shooting his shot into space   waiting

it isn’t enough

to hold everybody

& their faces   sing it

there are so many people

outside that haven’t heard it

yet i don’t know if

they can wait   how long

drake says   i do not know

what permanence is

i’m only now just learning

i’m upset   doing the best that i can

to be heard

i need more content

Shout Outs (Radio Edit)

this one’s for all my.                                                   in the whole wide.

                   for requests it’s.                                    i see you man.

                        texts cost.                                      i always knew we were gonna.

      big up my girl tash wanna wish you a.                       look at us.

   money good like.                                 make sure to get the bill payer’s.

is good all the time and all the.         big up little derek doing.

remember we used to.                                 for times like.

  let’s pour one out for.                      rest in.                  one time for the.

we don’t die we just.                                    love from stokey.        totty in the.

                long life and.             everyone stay.

Brother

it’s funny because the world is

burning this day is another

i wake up at 630 you south somewhere

wake up the day is itself

metro become evening standard

become sleep but today it’s autumn

and it’s been a court-mandated 12 mon...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Epigraph
• Sunday Service
• World Parent
• Fam
• In My Country
• There Is Joy Breaking Here
• Diplomacy
• A Reminder to Mind Your Own
• Tuesday
• Dalston Lane
• Butch Cassidy
• All I
• Oil Music
• Home
• Blessed Princess Lady
• Back to Sender
• Saturday
• Babel
• Grace
• Drake Equation
• Shout Outs (Radio Edit)
• Brother
• Notes
• Acknowledgments