When migrant writers speak of home, it is rarely about buildings. In Home in Motion, Tolu’ A. Akinyemi approaches home as permission rather than property. It appears as something shaped through presence, contribution, and consequence.
Now based in Newcastle upon Tyne, a city he describes as his “shining star”, Akinyemi’s poetry reflects a life shaped by movement and resettlement. The collection moves away from familiar framings of migration as loss alone. Instead, it observes how belonging takes form through participation, attention, and responsibility.
A tale of two cities
The collection is divided into two parts, marking a movement from outward geography toward interior reckoning. Part One traces physical and cultural landscapes, beginning in Ekiti State, Nigeria, and moving through British cities before settling in the North East.
In poems such as ‘This is Our City’ and ‘I Pledge an Oath of Allegiance to Newcastle upon Tyne’, the city is not presented as refuge or reward. It appears as a place where visibility carries responsibility. In the preface, Akinyemi frames documentation as a way to “avoid erasure and preserve history”. That concern threads through the opening section. Ekiti is recalled as a land of “erudite and scholarly” men, while Newcastle emerges as a “harbour of dreams” where one can “crystallise into a finished work of art”. Both places shape the speaker, though in different registers.
The generosity of craft
Akinyemi’s use of metaphor gives the collection much of its force. His images arrive plainly, yet they do not remain simple. Home appears as a “burning bush” in which the speaker becomes the “ashes of remembrance”, and as a “raging flood” that washes away even pleasant memories. These images carry emotional and historical pressure without excess.
In ‘Freedom Song’, the political sharpens. Akinyemi writes of Nigeria as a country that has “excreted its youth”, leaving behind “wingless birds”. The metaphor unsettles through clarity rather than flourish. It does not demand interpretation. It invites recognition.
This accessibility reflects a generosity of craft. The poems do not gatekeep meaning. They trust the reader to enter and remain entertained.
From the stage to the page
I have witnessed Akinyemi perform live, and the poems in this collection do not rely on performance to endure. On the page, the voice feels measured and deliberate. In ‘Poetry as a Tool for Kindness’, rhythm and pacing are carefully managed, with the poem imagined as something to be spread “like a riverbed overflowing with warmth”. The spacing between lines feels intentional rather than incidental.
The courage of vulnerability
Part Two widens the emotional range. The section moves between countries, showing how past violence continues to shape present experiences. In ‘Police Brutality’, Akinyemi describes it as an “orchestra of sorrow” in which sirens trigger “paranoia”. The poem situates that fear firmly within a familiar context.
That history informs ‘Fate’s Fatal Knock’, though the setting has changed. Written in the United Kingdom during a Saturday morning drive to Tynemouth, the poem recounts a panic attack that surfaces far from the site of the original harm. The speaker describes the “frenzy” of dialling 999 and the “fear of death” that “numbs rational thinking”. The threat is not external. It is remembered.
Read together, these poems show how trauma does not dissolve upon relocation. It travels inward rather than outward, resurfacing in moments of vulnerability. By focusing on panic rather than posture, Akinyemi resists abstraction. The political enters the personal through lived consequence rather than comparison.
A literary calling card
Reading ‘Home in Motion’ feels less like encountering a finished statement and more like being offered context. Each poem functions as an entry point rather than a conclusion. Newcastle is not idealised. It is presented as a place where a voice has been tested, shaped, and allowed consequence.
The collection closes without finality. What remains is the sense of a writer attentive to place, memory, and connection, and willing to remain present within them.
