The art of poetry is built on the principle of compression, a demand to say the most with the least. To write poetry is to wield words at their most imaginative level, to disturb the ordinary by making it strange, and to bring the familiar into sharper focus through defamiliarisation. It is also to engage in the mimetic tradition of literature: to refract and mirror society, revealing its fractures, vices, and occasional virtues. Poetry, in this sense, is never neutral.
Against this backdrop, Tobi Aluko’s debut poetry collection, Seagulls and Seashells, which is forthcoming from Witsprouts Books this November, emerges as a remarkable anthology. It is not a collection of poems that luxuriates in abstraction; rather, it directs its torch toward society, offering readers an opportunity to sit back and examine both present realities and historical ones. In a fast-paced world where capitalism, technology, and consumption relentlessly push us toward distraction, the book insists on reflection.
One of the collection’s most compelling thematic preoccupations is capitalism. This has long moved beyond being a mere economic system to permeate culture, family, and even intimacy. Seagulls and Seashells treats capitalism not as an abstract critique but as a reality that distorts the very texture of human connection. In “They Sell Weird Things at the Mall,” the poet situates this critique in the most ordinary of spaces: the shopping mall. The poem begins innocuously, presenting itself as a child’s dramatic monologue addressed to their mother. This grounding in the familial sphere is what makes the poem intimate. The child’s observations are simple but important. Where families once bonded over small rituals—peeling eggs, making juice—have been automated and replaced with “sweet chemicals.” The mall, then, with its shiny commodities, does not merely sell products but also estrangement.
The effect of this estrangement is not trivial. A parent also shares this observation, pointing out that among the mall’s offerings are “Big bottles of chemicals, always at a discount.” The repetition of voices across generations underscores the ubiquity of this disruption. What makes the poem striking is its deceptive simplicity. Its conversational tone conceals a sharp political edge. The mall itself becomes a synecdoche for capitalism. The haunting conclusion captures this truth:
They sell weird things at the mall,
like time away from family.
This preoccupation with lost intimacy recurs in “Put the Phone Down.” If “They Sell Weird Things at the Mall” critiques consumer capitalism, “Put the Phone Down” critiques digital capitalism and the alienation wrought by social media. The poem opens with a direct plea: “Can we play outside today?” The question disarms with its innocence, recalling the unmediated joy of childhood games like rock, paper, scissors or police and thief. The contrast between this innocence and the toxicity of online spaces is deliberate. Social media, the poem suggests, substitutes connection for comparison and interaction for isolation. The plea to “leave social media” is urgent. It is a call to recover the mundane joys of face-to-face bonding, and to replace digital distraction with genuine affection and presence.
Where these poems examine systemic alienation, “The Butt” zooms in on individual struggle, tackling the issue of drug addiction. In six concise stanzas, the poem paints the image of a homeless man scavenging for discarded cigarette butts. Though the cigarettes have lost their flavour, he smokes them nonetheless, clinging to the fleeting reprieve of nicotine. The portrait is stark: a miserly figure who, despite the degradation of his act, finds in it a temporary escape from the reality of homelessness.
Seagulls and Seashells, however, does not restrict itself to contemporary realities. It also gestures toward history in the poem “God is in the Water.” Here, the focus shifts to the transatlantic slave trade, a trauma that remains alive in African consciousness. In this poem, Aluko employs God as both a being and a concept. As a concept, God represents freedom, a liberation against the violence of enslavement:
You would rather be in the water with God,
than on the fields, picking cotton for spinning mills and checked clothes.
The juxtaposition of water and field is symbolic. The water, though dangerous, offers dignity and release. The fields, by contrast, signify captivity, exploitation, and degradation. At the same time, as a being, God functions as a source of hope and comfort. This could be interpreted as a reminder that amid oppression, enslaved Africans turned to spirituality for strength.
Taken together, the poems in Seagulls and Seashells move between the contemporary and the historical, between the political and the personal. What unites them is their insistence that poetry must illuminate what is at stake in our world and that poetry still has the power to make us pause, reflect, and, perhaps, resist.
Seagulls and Seashells is forthcoming from Witsprouts Books in November 2025.
