Death Does Not End at the Sea

Longlisted for the 2025 National Book Award in Poetry
Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry

In Gbenga Adesina's groundbreaking 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, 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 finally, 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.