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About the Book
From the breakout author of White Origami and Some Latitudes, Fistful of Bokeh, and Chronicler's Collected Poems comes a bold and electrifying new poetry collection that dissects memory, intimacy, and the rituals of self-discovery.
In All the Washrooms in Washington Where We Got Naked, Emmanuel Odekunle transforms the washroom into a space of raw confession, fragmented identity, and fleeting absolution. These poems swell with feverish imagery, tracing the echoes of love, loss, and the weight of bodies colliding under flickering lights.
“Tell the guitarist to omit the G-string,
tell me how I can mend back my broken figure
with songs about my country, with songs for songless nations,
when they wrap up bodies that have lost the music
in them in tight body bags—
is it so they won’t lose the hums they were taught not to sing?”
With a style both avant-garde and deeply emotive, Odekunle explores what it means to be undone—by music, by desire, by the unrelenting pull of gravity. Each poem is an act of surrender, a moment caught between cleansing and chaos, drowning and rebirth.
If you have ever stood before a shattered mirror and searched for yourself in its broken reflections, this book is for you.
Praise for the book
Reading All the Washrooms in Washington is like stepping into a dream where the mundane transforms into the extraordinary. Emmanuel Odekunle is a poet who does not simply write—he reconstructs reality, turning everyday objects into mirrors of deeper truths. A washroom is no longer just a washroom; it is a place of memory, ritual, and reckoning. "I have a wrench and a screw of everything; I will transform when I enter the restroom." This book will change you.
Carlos Williams, Author of Dancing with Ugly Angels
To call Odekunle’s work excellent poetry is not enough. His poetry is an experience—one that bends form, voice, and tradition into something strikingly new. He pulls from both dominant and intimate schools of poetry, creating a synthesis that feels both timeless and revolutionary. He is, by all ramifications, an artist in the truest sense.
Jose Ferdinand, Author of Free Their Dragons
Some books whisper, and then some books wail. This one wails. It is poetry at its most visceral—gritty, surreal, and soaked in feeling. Odekunle’s voice is unlike any other: raw, elegant, and utterly inescapable.
Darius Finch, Author of Rituals for the Drowned
If you read poetry and do not feel compelled to revisit its lines, then it was not poetry at all. Emmanuel Odekunle understands this deeply. His words demand to be read, reread, and whispered aloud. His poetry does not follow the rules—it reinvents them. Every word carries a secret waiting to unfold; every image is a doorway into something deeper. He is a poet who sees the extraordinary in the ordinary and makes you believe in it too.
Penchant Rose, Author of What Ends the World Ends the Word
Odekunle's poetry drifts between states of being—solid and liquid, present and memory, self and reflection. His words echo like voices in tiled rooms, layering personal history with mythic weight. He does not merely write poetry; he unearths it. This collection is both ritual and reckoning.
Margaret Elwin, Poet and Editor of The Dissolving Line
These poems do not stay on the page. They spill, they flood, they seep into the skin. Every line feels like it has been wrung from the body, scrubbed in soap and ash, and left to dry under flickering washroom lights. This is not just poetry—it is a baptism, a haunting, a prayer spoken through water.
Celeste Rowan, Author of When the Mirror Crack
About the Author
Emmanuel Odekunle is regarded as the Serial Genius of Marketing, who gives tuition on a wide variety of top-notch skills in poetry, digital marketing, web development, e-commerce management and setup, content writing and engineering, and SEO optimization techniques, digital strategy inclusive. A graduate economist, a detailed e-learning specialist, an evangelist of good news on various digital platforms, a business consultant, blogger, poet, cryptocurrency and NFT enthusiast, and an emotive writer and entrepreneur. Emmanuel has served as a leading digital strategist on the boards of several tech startups in Lagos and Ibadan, some of which include Finosell Global Technologies, BrandEx Animations, Baccalaureate Nigeria, Certified Now, Breakout Poetry Inc., etc. Armed with 14 certifications in digital marketing and digital strategy design, he has replete knowledge in dishing out content that transforms business sales, brings leads, and develops complete paradigm-shifting sales funnels that rival many others. Speaking of leisure, he enjoys creating books on the subject of money, intricate and thought-provoking poetry, and human psychology, as well as reading articles on different subject matter.
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