Death Does Not End at the Sea

 

Finished on: 5/7/2026

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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In the titular poem of this collection, Adesina writes from the perspective of an imagined gravedigger: 

 

"Burial: byrgan from Old English meaning 'to conceal, to shelter.' / I shelter the dead. / Burial: bergan from Old Saxon meaning 'to hide, to protect.' / I protect the dead."

That’s one of the foremost preoccupations of this stunning, moving collection: protecting the memory of the dead, sheltering them inside us, and apprehending our own transience here, how we too will one day be a memory and a song. This attention to memory is both deeply personal (as seen in the poems about the loss of Adesina’s father) and also communal. It extends to figures like James Baldwin—whose ghost Adesina chases across multiple poems throughout the collection—it extends to the ancients who crafted our languages, it extends to migrants and displaced peoples throughout time, whose legacies have shaped our present lives. Adesina’s poems beautifully weave together the personal with the communal, the past and the present, grief and the joy of living. 

 

It feels right to end on this line from “Citizen”: 

 

It is not true that I praise the dead. I merely ask them to teach me their song.