Fierce, angry abrasive poems about colonialism, race and the black experience in Britain, interlaced its thoughts on Caravaggio and an extended and gorgeously personal musing on death, this is, at times hard reading. brand new poetry from Yọ̀mí Ṣódé, examining the lives of black british men and boys; contemporary masculinity deepened by family, misinterpreted by media, and complicated by the riches, and the costs, of belonging and inheritance. His debut collection Manorism , published by Penguin in October 2022 alongside a stage adaptation at the Southbank Centre, was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2023 and the T S Eliot Prize 2022.

A remarkable, textured education in what it means to be made up of different parts, of light and dark places, and of worlds that we know, and that we don't .The focus of the speaker encompasses not only major issues but zooms in on the small events of the everyday. Yomi Sode's poems examine the various lenses observing the black body in Britain, the implications of its passage between class, cultural and racial spaces.

In his juxtapositions of paintings, black urban life and media, he makes us think of what poetry can be: that the book itself is the poem, and each topic a stanza in a bigger epiphany . Caravaggio - originally, unexpectedly - looms large: as a man who moved between spheres of exalted patronage and petty criminality; as a painter who, amid the elegant conventions of late Mannerism, forged his own style of visceral dark and light; and as an individual whose recognized genius was allowed to legitimate and excuse his violence. As it stands, many of the poems in this collection reference Caravaggio and his paintings, exploring the fact that people still comment on the artists greatness and importance in the history of the Baroque movement, failing to acknowledge the horrifying truth.asks what it means to find oneself between worlds- who is, and who isn’t, allowed ti be more than their origins? Snippets of Yoruba interweave with English, and a moving final sequence - adapted for the Almeida stage in June 2021 to glowing reviews from the Guardian , Time Out and others - charts the dramatic reconciliations surrounding a death in the family. this is beautifully written but I couldn’t give it five stars because to me this needs to be spoken to you rather than just read by yourself. Yomi Ṣode’s debut collection Manorism explores family, survival, generational trauma and the complexities of belonging – it is an examination of the lives of Black British men and boys.