Death Does not End at the Sea

Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry

In Gbenga Adesina’s debut book of poems, a defiant and wise 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 in America, 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 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.

In a lyrical voice at once new and surprisingly ancient, 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.