TOLU OLORUNTOBA lived in Nigeria and the United States before settling in the metro area of Coast Salish lands known as Vancouver with his family. He spent his early career as a primary care physician, and currently manages virtual health projects with organizations in British Columbia. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, while his debut chapbook, Manubrium, was a bpNichol Chapbook Award finalist. The Junta of Happenstance, his first full-length collection, was the winner of the 2021 Governor General's Literary Award for English Language Poetry.
Praise for Tolu Oloruntoba and Each One a Furnace
"The compendium of post-apocalyptic finches we meet in Tolu
Oloruntoba's Each One a Furnace seem to reach back to us from a
not-so-distant future, to narrate the evolutionary burnout of most
of the bird family Fringillidae. Imagine if a poem could be the
collective knowledge of a species in the moment of its extinction,
a translation of the painfully beautiful finale of all birdsong.
'What lessons did you learn / about the transactional conviviality
/ of captive flocks?' Oloruntoba's finches, buntings, siskins,
grosbeaks are all somewhere between mid-dying flight and already
gone, singing like canaries in the coal mine of global capital,
flaming out like comets of feather and consciousness and history."
-Sonnet L'Abbe, author of Sonnet's Shakespeare
"Oloruntoba draws on a wide frame of references, from Norse
mythology to modern gaming and the work of contemporary artist
Wangechi Mutu, creating a thoroughly modern and unique ecopoetics."
-poetryfoundation.org
"These are poems of deep thought, passionate engagement and often
searing images." -Toronto Star
"Each One a Furnace is an expansive, powerful collection,
animated by a combination of analytical keenness, rage, and
vulnerability." -Winnipeg Free Press
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
