Obalúayé (PB) (2022)

Obaluaye is a poetry collection for the things that plague us. Obaluaye is a Yoruba god of infirmities and healing.

The poems in this book talk of cradles and graves and every experience in-between, employing the duality attribute of the Orisha of epidemics. Each poem is an experience of health and death wrapped in a pod, of strength and flaws and a thirst for things that elude.

This collection explores the human cycle-the routine of life and death (and a possibility of restoration, rebirth). It seeks to understand the things that haunt us-our fears, our nightmares, quest for freedom, the weight of responsibilities, the paradox of hope, devotion and betrayals, failed states and the covid-19 pandemic.

Obaluaye is a realization that "life is a cocktail of sweet, sour and insipid" and we are born to run this cycle, reaching for light, reaching for freedom...that ultimately leads to the grave.