Tolu Oloruntoba
After abandoning plans to become a comic book artist and fantasy author, Tolu Oloruntoba spent his early career as a primary care physician. He currently manages virtual health projects, and has lived in Nigeria, the United States, and Canada. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, while his debut chapbook, Manubrium, was a bpNichol Chapbook Award finalist. He is the author of Each one a Furnace (Penguin, 2022) and The Junta of Happenstance (Anstruther, 2021) , winner of the 2022 Griffin Poetry Prize and the 2021 Governor General Literary Award for Poetry. He lives in the metro area of Coast Salish lands known as Vancouver.
The Tinderbox
–Tolu Oloruntoba
We were a conflagration asking
To be incarnated into the world.
My mother, superstitious,
Kept my father and I apart,
Two stones made of
The same igneous anger.
Everyone else at home, eyes like saucers,
Was crying as if in preparation,
Like firetrucks before a plane crash
In case we combusted.
Like my mother had once hidden
All the nooses we had,
Knocking down all hanging hooks from the ceiling,
They hid the tinder, and the wood,
Making tears into flame retardant
To paper the walls.
Your palmprints have returned
As shingles around my left eye.
There’s extinguishing foam on the runway.
We meet again in our prefabricated peace.
Don’t aim the will at me
If you will not shoot.
Links
- “Griffin Poetry Prize-winning poet Tolu Oloruntoba reflects on seeking solace through poetry.” CBC. 5 May 2022.
- “Q&A with Tolu Oloruntoba.” Victoria Festival of Authors. 10 September 2022.
- “A poem is never done”: An Interview with Tolu Oloruntoba” by David Ly. Prism International. 29 July 2021.