Award Winning Nigerian Poet, Yomi Sode, Visits Cranleigh

Published by Cranleigh School on Thursday 5th of October 2023

It was a great privilege to host performance poet, Yomi Sode, yesterday for a special Sixth Form literary evening.

Yomi is a mulitple award-winning Nigerian British writer. A former recipient of the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship, he has written and performed two sell out theatre shows as well as a libretto, Remnants, which he performed with the Chineke! orchestra.He is also the founder of BoxedIn, First Five, The Daddy Diaries and mentorship programme 12in12.

Yomi’s shared with us a range of poems from his debut collection, Manorism, which was shortlisted for both The TS Eliot Prize and the Rathbones Folio Prize. The works, delivered powerfully, explored family, survival, generational trauma, the complexities of belonging and the ongoing pressure of code-switching. They swept us from seventeenth century Rome to modern commentary on Glastonbury on a range of human experience and emotion.

Audience participation was encouraged, with intervals and introductions to the poems delivered in Yomi’s easy and humorous style and the Q&A session enabled a deeper look at the writer behind the work.

As we celebrated National Poetry Day, it was particularly good to welcome pupils and staff from schools in our network to share the event and make new connections.