BOOKS
TENDER HEADED
Akashic Books, 2023
Winner of the National Poetry Series
The Millions | Must-Read Poetry Collection
Publishers Weekly | Most Notable Books for Fall/Winter 2023
The Root | Books by Black Authors We Can’t Wait to Read in December 2023
Chicago Review of Books | Must-Read Books of December 2023
Library Journal | What to Read in 2023
Advance Praise for Tender Headed
“In Olatunde Osinaike’s Tender Headed, we find a contemplative, earnest young man seriously engaged with inherited notions of masculinity and “Blackness,” one who examines the problems, perils, and pleasures of each, and means to make sense of it all. This alone would make Osinaike’s debut collection a worthwhile read, but what sets it apart from most of what passes for socially engaged “poetry” nowadays is that Osinaike is not relying on The Project to do the heavy lifting. Rather, he is writing actual poems. Inventive, musical, and surprising poems.”
— John Murillo, author of Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry, Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award winner
“Osinaike is an oracle. These poems ask us to ‘pivot [our] necks to scan what has been done,’ then fix our eyes ahead on a Black coming-of-age, a Black coming-of-risk. . . Tender Headed annihilates the lie of a singular Black male identity.”
— Courtney Faye Taylor, author of Concentrate, Cave Canem Prize winner
“It is clear that there is a longing for answers that will not come easy, birthed from questions many writers wouldn’t have the fortification to ask. Osinaike’s confidence in the movement between styles, but the vulnerability in the lens he allows us to view the world through makes for a complicated negotiation between the brick/mortar of language and serenity of his voice.”
— William Evans, author of We Inherit What the Fires Left
“Tender Headed is a tour de force exploration, to be sure, of black vulnerability — with its etymological roots in how we wear our wounds — but also, critically, a certain vision of black overcoming and abundance. Throughout this collection, we are not only surviving, but celebrating. We are irreducibly alive.”
— Joshua Bennett, author of The Sobbing School, National Poetry Series winner
“. . . from the barbershop to the gas station to grandma’s house, through praise and parables, spells and invention, Tender Headed challenges and captivates. It blooms beyond the page, strong in all its tenderness."
— Diannely Antigua, author of Ugly Music, Whiting Award winner
“Tender Headed is a simmering and sensitive offering from a poet of great promise. These poems sing of a writer seeking to make sense of the masculinity we’ve been handed from a sick society.”
— Nate Marshall, author of Wild Hundreds, Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize winner
CHAPBOOKS
SPEECH THERAPY
Winner of the Atlas Review’s Chapbook Contest
Advance Praise for Speech Therapy
“Olatunde Osinaike’s Speech Therapy is so nuanced, refined, and complex. Oppositions and inquiries dominate this collection. The lyric voice maintains a careful and satisfying intelligence throughout. It feels major, the pains this speaker takes to be simultaneously complicit of patriarchal violence as he is also viciously aware of being hemmed forever into the margins. The verse, which often manifests itself in couplets, tercets, and other uniform forms, reckons with such paradoxical balance: the veneer of order braces against what Osinaike calls a weaponized convenience. He tells us “Certainty alone has not kept me,” and, in the same poem, invites us into his landscape of opposites: “I invite you to think of when you, too, have stepped / with the realness of your bright tongue amidst this daunting world / pitch-dark and as perfect as desired.” Speech Therapy’s diction marks its energy and intelligence. It accesses high and low registers while maintaining a voice, earnest and saturated in contradiction. The collection is a gift, a wealth, a truth.”
— Natalie Eilbert, author of Overland and Indictus, Noemi Press Prize winner
The New Knew
Thirty West Publishing House
Advance Praise for The New Knew
“Olatunde Osinaike’s The New Knew is an exercise in vulnerability and intimacy. “Break me down into constellations,” the speaker in “Self-Portrait as a Cardboard Box” pleas, and that is precisely what Osinaike does in these pages. Highlighting what it is to be black in a world on edge with language that evokes the best poets, emcees, and slow-crooners alike, he breaks his world down - breaks himself down - and asks us to do the same. To open ourselves up to each other, to the pleasures and pains of this world, and, most of all, to ourselves.”
— Malcolm Friend, author of Our Bruises Kept Singing Purple, Hillary Gravendyk Prize winner
“In The New Knew, Olatunde Osinaike combines a razor-sharp wit, tenderness, and a musical ear to create a work that interrogates the way America views the black body, as well as the way America defines itself. His poems are restless, searching for truth, joy, and love in a world that is more than often lacking in it. Osinaike’s poems deftly highlight the fragility of black existence in the wake of this country’s long racist tradition, but what makes these poems special is the way they work toward defining blackness on its own terms. They sing toward the light, even with darkness all around them. When Osinaike writes - “Siren says / fix your mouth / into a hollow hallelujah / crescendo your prayer / and hope they reach / your dreams fast enough” - it is both a warning and an instruction manual from the ancestors on how to get through it all. A work of the body that speaks to the soul.”
— Kwame Opoku-Duku, author of The Unbnd Verses, winner of the Glass Chapbook Series
ANTHOLOGIES
New Poetry from the Midwest 2019
New American Press
New American Press releases a new volume of recently published work from the Midwest each year to bring more visibility to Midwestern writing that is innovative, engaging, finely crafted, and strong in voice.
"Midwestern" is a term diverse in meaning, and we will seize on these qualities as we gather the best work from the Midwest. We want stories and poems with heart. We also want to explode the generally accepted notions of what the Midwest is and what Midwestern writing is, while honoring its rich and long-standing traditions.
What counts as work from the Midwest? We welcome writers who currently live in, pursued an education in, or were born in one of the following twelve states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, or Wisconsin. We also welcome work by writers addressing any of these states, or the region as a whole. If you believe there's something about you or your writing that resonates with the Midwest, we're probably interested.
Best New Poets 2018
Meridian/University of Virginia Press
"[A] reminder that contemporary poetry is not only alive and well but continuing to grow."
— Publishers Weekly
"This collection stands out among the crowd claiming to represent emergent poets. Much of the editing and preliminary reading was done by emerging poets themselves, which results in an anthology that's fresh and eclectic, and may actually represent a significant portion of the best new poetry being written by the next generation."
— Virginia Quarterly Review
Entering its fourteenth year, Best New Poets has established itself as a crucial venue for rising poets and a valuable resource for poetry lovers. The only publication of its kind, this annual anthology is made up exclusively of work by writers who have not yet published a full-length book. The poems included in this eclectic sampling represent the best from the many that have been nominated by the country’s top literary magazines and writing programs, as well as some two thousand additional poems submitted through an open online competition. The work of the fifty writers represented here provides the best perspective available on the continuing vitality of poetry as it is being practiced today.