Personalize Your Library Experience

When you choose your preferred branches and age groups, the site will automatically filter the content to match your selections.

Select Your Branches

Select Your Age Groups

This information will be saved as a cookie, and cannot be connected to a library login or transferred between computers

icon of stars; highlighting that you can open the select favorite branch overlay Save & Close
Return to All Blog Posts
Back to Top

National Poetry Month: Olatunde Osinaike

About Blog Post Apr 3, 2024 by SCLSNJ Staff
National Poetry Month: Olatunde Osinaike   Created by Bob Helmbrecht, collection development librarian Our National Poetry Month poet for today is Olatunde Osinaike.  Osinake's debut collection, "Tender Headed," was published in December by Akashic Books. It's received quite a few excellent reviews, including those from “Booklist” and “Publishers Weekly.” From the publisher’s description: "Examining the themes of Black identity, accountability, and narration, we encounter a series of revealing snapshots into the role language plays in chiseling possibility and its rigid command of depiction. Olatunde Osinaike's startling debut sorts through the many-minded masks behind Black masculinity." The collection was one of the five winners of the 2022 National Poetry Series, a prestigious literary award designed to promote emerging poets. It was selected by the poet Camille Rankine, who said of the collection: "As he interrogates the inner and outer workings of masculinity in all its sharp and tender parts, and the way a Black man meets the world, his poems strut and duck and weave across their pages. These poems unpack the ingredients of being and make a meal of language. They relish every word, every sound, every syllable. Their music is the sugar that makes us take our medicine, but their beauty refuses to be disguise." You can find links to some poems, interviews, and essays on Osinaike's Linktree. Read a few, then check out "Tender Headed" today!
chat loading...