Join us for the launch of Gbenga Adesina’s debut book of poetry, Death Does Not End at the Sea, on Friday, September 5 at 144 Montague Street and via Zoom! Doors will open at 6 PM and readings will begin at 7 PM. Camonghne Felix will open for Adesina, and a Q&A with the poets will follow the readings. There will also be time to purchase books & get them signed at the end!

Note that by attending this event, you agree to abide by our code of conduct and COVID-19 policy. All in-person attendees for events are currently required to wear masks (regardless of vaccination status) except readers at a safe distance on stage. We will have masks available. Brooklyn Poets reserves the right to dismiss from our programs any participant found to be in violation of these policies. Thank you for respecting our community.

About Death Does Not End at the Sea

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.

About the Author

Gbenga Adesina is a Nigerian poet and essayist. He received his MFA from New York University where he held the Goldwater Poetry Fellowship and was mentored by Yusef Komunyakaa. He has received support from the Poet’s House, New York; Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown; Colgate University’s Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship, Folger Shakespeare’s Library, Washington DC; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Harlem and Harvard University’s historic Woodberry Poetry Room. His work has been published in the Paris Review, Harvard Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, Guernica, Yale Review, New York Times Magazine, Best American Poetry and elsewhere. His first book of poetry, Death Does Not End at the Sea is out this fall.

About the Opener

Camonghne Felix, poet and essayist, is the author of Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation (One World, 2023), which was hailed by TIME Magazine and Vogue as one of the most anticipated books of 2023 and top memoirs of 2023. Her poetry debut Build Yourself a Boat (Haymarket Books, 2019), was long-listed for the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry, shortlisted for the PEN/Open Book Awards, and shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Awards. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Academy of American Poets, Harvard Review, LitHub, the New Yorker, PEN America, Poetry Magazine, Freeman’s Journal and elsewhere. Her next full length work, Let the Poets Govern, is forthcoming from One World, an imprint of Penguin Random House.