Oluwaseun Olayiwola's debut poetry collection, Strange Beach, is brought to life in audiobook form, narrated by the author himself. The Nigerian American dancer and poet explores themes of race, family, queer identity, hedonism and the body, drawing its title from Claudia Rankine's poem Citizen: An American Lyric. The shoreline serves as a recurring image, representing a threshold where forces collide and the landscape is forever changing shape.
Olayiwola's verse dances between the abstract and the philosophical, occasionally discarding narrative thread for meaning that can be hard to glean. However, clarity comes with hearing it read out loud. His narration brims with warmth and passion, allowing listeners to bask in imagery, atmosphere and the speaker's rich interior world. The title poem describes the physical body blown every which way 'like a conch shell where the echo of emotion in extremis floods the chamber'.
In Crustacean, the speaker observes a figure running their hand through water when 'a little crustacean attaches itself to you fingertip … In its vibration we ourselves are seen. To love what you cannot see or to see what you cannot love? Which is your problem?' The poem concludes with a flourish of childlike abandon: 'at a hilltop, you knot your hands behind your back, not with a string but with a mind / The grass pelts your face as you roll down the hillside, the velocity of recklessness'.
