And yet, in humans, I know my love as rare / As any they belied with false compare.

I am fairly sure I have never received a ‘compliment’ in which I believed that formed itself in words and metaphors, for these things are essentially fictive and their truth at the same remove from simple belief as anything else significant that is still composed of fictions. We can’t live without fictions but we should … More And yet, in humans, I know my love as rare / As any they belied with false compare.

‘I eat his friends’  /                applause’: a poem on ‘a compliment’, perhaps: Oluwayseun Olayiwola’s ‘There is Nothing Like That Black Voice’

The poet is visiting Lighthouse Bookshop in Edinburgh on 11th March 7 p.m. I have enjoyed very much reading the debut volume of poetry by a new queer Black poet, Oluwayseun Olayiwola, called Strange Beach. For this blog, perhaps the first of two, I will concentrate on one poem because it centres on a compliment … More ‘I eat his friends’  /                applause’: a poem on ‘a compliment’, perhaps: Oluwayseun Olayiwola’s ‘There is Nothing Like That Black Voice’