Snippets of Yoruba interweave with English, and a moving final sequence, part poetry, part play, charts the dramatic reconciliations surrounding a death in the family. In his juxtapositions of paintings, black urban life and media , he makes us think of what poetry can be: that t he book itself is the poem, and each topic a stanza in a bigger epiphany . Manorism is a powerful exploration of the stark contrast between the reception of black culture from the black community versus appropriated black culture from the white community. another is "Manorism II: A Thanos Theory" ; wherein he says "Mocking a movement because its's not his problem. There is a love letter to his son, the sad end of Big Mummy and the rituals for the embalming of Okonkwo.

I don't think I've ever read such a heartbreaking collection as this angry but deeply vulnerable and tender portrait of Black masculinity. When I speak of justice and anger written with luminous genius, I will forever be speaking of Yomi Sode's Manorism , a glorious, furious collection that tells a thousand stories in stunningly crafted verse. Yomi Sode's debut articulates the most subtle nuances of Black British Masculinity with a breathtaking vulnerability. But rather than drifting off into a netherworld, he knows when to skilfully shift gear and to land us right back into the reality of young black men in England in the 21st Century.Tender, lyrical, questioning, fierce , these poems make you think about the world we live in and how we treat the black men in it . 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.

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.Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's daily session limit. Manorism is a poetic examination of the lives of Black British men and boys: propped up and hemmed in by contemporary masculinity, deepened by family, misrepresented in the media, and complicated by the riches, and the costs, of belonging and inheritance. Caravaggio appears throughout the text as a symbol of the outsider who had to fight his corner to survive and to succeed as an artist. asks what it means to find oneself between worlds- who is, and who isn’t, allowed ti be more than their origins?

It's moving, conpelling and 'pleasurable' in the sense that all good poetry is - it expresses something ineffable with beauty, poignancy, humour, and style. Ode, a British Nigerian poet and performer, we step into Yomi’s world – a diaspora of people and places, family and friends, which stretches from Nigeria to Brixton and Dalston in London, UK. Yomi's acclaimed one-man show COAT toured nationally to sold-out audiences, including at the Brighton Festival, Roundhouse Camden and the Battersea Arts Centre. is definitely someone special and i have a feeling he will be around and spoken about for a very very long time.Some of my favourite poems are "PC Joshua Savage Pulls Leon Fontana Over for a Routine Check" ; wherein he says "What is there to teach white men who do not feel their power? The violence of artists such as Caravaggio in seventeenth-century Rome and modern-day commentary by the likes of David Starkey and Piers Morgan provide a lens for considering differences of impunity afforded to white and Black people. The poems cover a range of topics including black masculinity and anxiety, the fear of confrontations with the police and the systemic racism that offers understanding for people coming from a white privileged background as opposed to Black men and women. Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here.

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.

In poems exploring family, survival, generational trauma and the complexities of belonging, Manorism is an examination of the lives of Black British men and boys. Why is it that a famous white artist is now celebrated, but if a man or woman of another race was to commit those same crimes, they would be remembered in bad light and their actions would be constantly talked about by society? Sode talks about a number of topics, from black Britishness to masculinity, community and popular culture.