The dancer and author gives this collection clarity and warmth as he narrates poems about family, queer identity, hedonism and raceThe first poetry collection from the Nigerian American dancer and poet Oluwaseun Olayiwola explores themes of race, family, queer identity, hedonism and the body. Strange Beach takes its title from Claudia Rankine’s poem Citizen: An American Lyric which describes “each body is a strange beach, and if you let in the excess emotion, you will recall the Atlantic Ocean breaking on our heads”. The shoreline is a recurring image in Strange Beach’s poems, a threshold where forces collide and the landscape is forever changing shape.Olayiwola’s verse dances between the abstract and the philosophical, and there are instances when the narrative thread is discarded and meaning is hard to glean. Clarity comes with hearing it read out loud, however. Olayiwola’s narration brims with warmth and passion, allowing us to bask in imagery, atmosphere and the speaker’s rich inte...