iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 29/06/2026

Best Canadian Poetry 2027 will be published on November 17, 2026. It was the honour of a lifetime to serve as guest editor, working alongside the brilliant series editor, Anita Lahey.

Book Cover: Best Canadian Poetry 2027 Selected by Tolu Oloruntoba There is a small mustard-colored moose against a magenta background, which the text is also presented against.

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 16/06/2026

Vancouver Poet Laureate @eleekg.bsky.social will be launching "sometimes, forest" at @shelflifebooks.bsky.social tonight at 7 PM. @nikkireimer.bsky.social @ryanfitzpublic.bsky.social @sjonespoet.bsky.social and I will be reading briefly, in support. Hope to see you there!

Event poster with the following text: Book Launch June 16 | 7 PM | 1302 4 St W | Free
Shelf Life Books
With Author
Elee Kralji Gardiner

Joined by
Tolu Oloruntoba
Samantha Jones
Ryan Fitzpatrick
Nikki Reimer

There is a photo of the cover of “sometimes, forest” by Elee Kralji Gardiner at the left corner of the graphic. Photos of the readers are also featured against a teal background.

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 30/01/2026

I imagine how ghoulish I would have been if I managed to get into McKinsey any of the ~7 times I tried. I felt consulting would be an appropriate vehicle for my creativity and desire to solve problems (and be perceived as intelligent.) Screenshot is from the poem “Lethality,” in UNRAVEL.

“LETHALITY

If L = λ x W, the engineers of our Trolley Problem
need more people to shovel their coal. I did all I could
to become one of those consultants. But having seen
the lethality of PowerPoint bullets, I’m glad I failed."

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 15/01/2026

I discovered a concept, the Theory of Positive Disintegration, that explains a lot about my state of mind over the last decade. Screenshot is from Lindsey Mackereth’s newsletter article "When Burnout Says: “This Life No Longer Feels Like Mine.”

Screenshot with white text on a dark background:

"What Is Positive Disintegration?

Developed by Polish psychiatrist Kazimierz Dabrowski, the Theory of Positive Disintegration (TPD) offers a developmental model of personality and mental health rooted in internal conflict and psychological growth through crisis. Unlike traditional models that define mental health as the absence of symptoms or distress, Dabrowski reframes mental health as a process—a dynamic, often painful transformation in which an individual’s previous psychological structures disintegrate to allow the emergence of higher levels of self-awareness, emotional complexity, and authenticity.

From this perspective, what is typically labeled as “mental illness” or “breakdown” can also be understood as a necessary stage of personality development—a “positive” disintegration where psychological distress signals that an old, inadequate self-system is breaking down to enable the construction of a more integrated, autonomous, and authentic self.

This conceptualization is especially relevant for gifted and neurocomplex adults, who often carry intense emotional sensitivities, heightened awareness, and complex cognitive profiles that challenge simplistic notions of mental health as “stability” or “normality.” Their inner lives tend to be multidimensional and nonlinear, and crises can be markers of transformation, not just dysfunction.

Burnout is exhaustion.
Positive disintegration is transformation.

Sometimes, they occur simultaneously."

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 03/01/2026

Poem about how in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Humbaba was destroyed for natural resources. From the poem “Discover” in UNRAVEL. This is all we have known, and know.

Photo of a page of UNRAVEL

“IV.

Humbaba was wrong(ed) in the first of the resource wars. That guardian of cedar groves where un-owned bounty maddened man; watcher with a face that was a coil of visceral distress, a script to scry splendors in pocks of horror. He grew more monstrous in each encore of the men sharpening adzes by firelight, a fateful ranger launching warning stridors between the dense trees.

Phallic Gilgamesh: the cables of his neck, and the news of his want, overtook foes in the first hint of dominion, and regime change. His sign is ours: a gorgon head, a beard cleft; heraldic field of treeslopes afire, and bleeding bark-wounds rotating over extracting axes. We clipped the last forest. Angels must die.”

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 24/11/2025

We’re about a year out from the publication of Best Canadian Poetry 2027. The team at Biblioasis has been reading diligently for most of the year, but requests your help with finding even more Canadian writing published in 2025. Details in the image and QP.

“Essays . Short Fiction . Poetry
Best Canadian Series
Call for 2025
Journal Issues!

Canadian print and online publications
&
International / US publications featuring Canadian writwers

Contact: bestcanadian@biblioasis.com"

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 10/11/2025

Reminds me of the poem “What Birds Were” by Chimwemwe Undi.

WHAT BIRDS WERE
Yes, animals, and small, and spined - no, not unlike a dog,
say dog, but with feathers.

And not always, and not always small.
Oh, a feather is a kind of leaf. They were good, the birds, yes,

and some of them were kind of bad.
They made eggs - you've seen an egg, remember? Oh, flight is a kind of movement

that acknowledges its limitations.
A beak is like a sharp mouth. This same sky, say sky, but blue, and before falling -

and you would look and there would be - yeah, small animal, that's close,
with a body of bones so light it grew wings,

say wings, instead of hands.

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 24/10/2025

Stabbed through the heart by this passage from Isaac Fellman’s THE TWO DOCTORS GÓRSKI.

"Well," said Ariel, "you must forgive yourself"
"Why? I ruined somebody's life."
Ariel's face turned to hers, and in it there was a kind of puzzled pity. He looked, for the first time, like Marec. He said, "If you don't forgive yourself, you will do it again.
Not that thing, perhaps, but something as bad. And you must not stop there. You must forgive yourself for all of it, for everything that happened before you did this, both the things that were your fault and the things that were not. You must forgive yourself and do it again, until the very limit of your forgiveness is reached. It will hurt. People don't understand that it hurts. When you have for-given, you will be able to look at yourself, and then you will be able to change. Not before.”

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 13/10/2025

With alt text (and I hope this isn’t AI)

Chicago - A 31-year-old Domino's delivery driver was arrested late Friday after what police described as a "pepperoni standoff" over the
30-minute delivery guarantee.
According to neighbors, Jessica Ramirez arrived at an apartment complex 12 minutes late with a large pizza order. When the customer asked for a discount, Ramirez allegedly dropped the boxes on the sidewalk and shouted, "I race traffic, not time machines!"
Witnesses say she then opened one of the pizzas, plucked off slices of pepperoni, and began flinging them like Frisbees while chanting,
"Thirty minutes or less is corporate propaganda!"
Officers say Ramirez refused to hand over the remaining pizzas until someone "signed a petition to abolish delivery deadlines."
Reactions were mixed-some residents called her "a warrior against unrealistic expectations," while others said she had taken "hot and ready" a little too literally.

Mugshot-style photo of a white person in a black zip-up hoodie with one shoulder bared.

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 03/10/2025

Trio of upcoming events: 1. October 9, 7 PM, MDT: Flywheel Reading Series, with Beth Everest & Doug Waite. Pages Books, Calgary. 2. October 15, 12:30 PM MDT: MacEwan U Visiting Authors Series. Room 7-265, MacEwan University Edmonton. 3. November 19, 12 PM PST: SFU Lunch Poems, with Karen Solie.

Orange flyer with white text within a black border. Text reads:
"October 9, 2025
Flywheel
Tolu Oloruntoba
Beth Everest
Music by Doug Wasite
Pages Books on Kensington
7:00 PM"

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 20/08/2025

Kirby writes, and makes, beautiful books. I feel lightened, yet moored (that is, I feel held) having read this gem of a book this morning. Thank you, @itsakirby.bsky.social

Chapbook cover with the words “Kirby” and “Softie” shows two people in tender embrace. One might, like me, initially mistake it for one person with a hand tucked behind their head in slumber, but the second hand and forearm belong to the second subject who is mostly out of frame. White card with the word “Enjoy” and a signature is tucked into the book.

Title page with the words “Softie” “Kirby” and “knife|fork|book” on recto and an on verso, arresting detail of a woven piece of fabric, with what appear to be different coloured squares. The central square is orange with a black trim, with columns of punctuate shapes in slightly overlapping rows with alternating colours, one colour per horizontal row.

Epigraph with the following text:

“One of my secret dreams is to sleep with everyone I especially like. And I don’t mean sex. I just mean sleep. And body warmth. Just to hug all night.”

- Joe Brainard. Letter to Bill Berkson, August 22, 1970,
Calais, Vermont.

Page with 2 stanzas of poetry:

“Kiss my darlings.
I am so proud
of you.

Never mistake
Pride for liberation.
Kiss them all.”

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 16/04/2025

And a save-the-date for if you’re in Calgary on May 6: Double Launch of UNRAVEL and Nick Thran’s EXISTING MUSIC. 7 PM at @shelflifebooks.bsky.social

Event poster with an orange background featuring dotted wavy patterns. Two book covers are presented side-by-side: Nick Thran’s "Existing Music," and Tolu Oloruntoba’s “Unravel”. Other text on the cover: DOUBLE LAUNCH
TUESDAY, MAY 6
AT 7 PM
SHELF LIFE BOOKS

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 11/04/2025

And to prove that all I ever do is write the same 3 poems, here’s a section of “Dismantle,” from the recently published collection.

II. CANKER

So who rightly called us scum on the fluid-slick pebble? Our ambit is minuscule. We have sullied this marvel, yes, but we could besmirch much more. Think of a heart in a body, a nucleus in a cell, or a human inside the titanium machinery of conquest. Think of the abandon, the colonial singularity of our red goo. We may be feeble, algae, but our exoskeleton grows interstellar, probing fingers bearing gifts of gold discs. “Listen,” we say. “Kneel.”

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 30/03/2025

Trio of Ontario launch events for UNRAVEL, with the M&S Spring cohort. Toronto: April 1, 6:15, Society Clubhouse Peterborough: April 2, 7 PM, Take Cover Books Hamilton: April 3, 7 PM, Epic Books Hope you can join us if you’re in the area.

Poetry Night 2025
Ft. Chris Bailey, Aisha Sasha John, Tolu Oloruntoba & Rebecca Salazar
April 1st. Doors Open at 6 PM, event begins at 6:15 PM. Society Clubhouse 967 College St.
Free admission. Tickets available on Eventbrite.
Tickets are general admission and do not guarantee seating.

McClelland & Stewart Poetry Event
Ft. Chris Bailey, Aisha Saha John, & Tolu Oloruntoba
April 2nd 7 PM,
Take Cover Books
59 Hunter Street in East City, Peterborough, ON. Free Admission.

McClelland & Stewart Poetry Event
Ft. Chris Bailey, Aisha Saha John, & Tolu Oloruntoba
April 3rd
Doors open at 6:30 PM, event begins at 7 PM
Epic Books 226 Locke Street South, Hamilton, ON.

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 23/03/2025

A poet, a lawyer (also a poet), and a philosopher + theologian had very nice things to say about my deconstruction book. I’m very grateful to. Eduardo C. Corral, Reginald Dwayne Betts, and James K.A. Smith’s for their kindness.

“'Everything is coda in a never-ending world,’ writes Tolu Oloruntoba in his spectacular third book. Spiralling through a myriad of histories, experiences, and dictions, the language’s momentum is modulated by Oloruntoba’s deft control of line and syntax. This tension, this craft, enables Oloruntoba to slow and to explore the bewildering and fascinating ruptures in self-making, world-making. This is symphonic and soaring poetry.”

—Eduardo C. Corral, author of Guillotine (link: https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/guillotine)

"Unravel by Tolu Oloruntoba is a dope and fascinating collection of poetry that navigates the intersections of identity, migration, fatherhood, and history. A vivid poetic digging in the crates, it threads through the many layers of Whitman’s multitudes: the Nigerian self, riffing on memories of home; the immigrant self, navigating displacement and belonging; the father self, reflecting on his new born daughter; and the literary self, referencing a rich reading history. Unravel lingers in the mind as a testament to Oloruntoba’s ability to blend intellect and emotion into unforgettable verse."

—Reginald Dwayne Betts, author of Felon (link: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393652147)

“This stunning collection of poems is a searing, prophetic commentary on the banalities of late modern life. The language is shot through with philosophical brilliance and spiritual energy. These poems play with diction in a way that is deadly serious—even apocalyptic, unveiling something of the world and ourselves.”

—James K.A. Smith, Calvin University, author of How (Not) To Be Secular (link: https://www.eerdmans.com/9781467440615/how-not-to-be-secular/) and How to Inhabit Time (link: https://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/how-to-inhabit-time/407751)

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 12/03/2025

Ok, hear me out. A Lord of the Rings re-make, but with these two taking the One Ring to Mordor:

Still from the movie “Dude, Where’s My Car?” showing Aston Kutcher and Seann William Scott’s characters.

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 29/01/2025

Somehow the first image posted as a video (welp), so here is a different version.

Photo of a bone-white book cover with a centrally placed sculpture showing the head and neck of a pharaonic figure in burnished dark stone. The figure has a grim expression. Its nose has been vandalized, as have portions of both ears. A tapered and bulbous crown is also diagonally sheared off, with about a third of the crown (mostly on the right side of the image) missing. There is red text in three positions on the cover: “Unravel” (top left), “Tolu Oloruntoba” (bottom left), and “Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize” (bottom left).

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 29/01/2025

UNRAVEL has the good fortune of being published in the company of Aisha Sasha John’s TOTAL, Chris Bailey’s FORECAST: PRETTY BLEAK, and Rebecca Salazar’s ANTIBODY. I hope you’ll read those as well! cc @hollay.bsky.social

Spring poets image: Square image with orange ribbon trim at the top with a v-shaped end stopping short of the right border, holding the text “2025 SPRING POETS.” There 4 book covers clustered to the left of the image. Clockwise: a fiery iris and a matte black circular center and the text “total Aisha Sasha John.”; rustic looking chronometer (with the word “Poems" on it) covering the bottom left quadrant and laid on a surface with a longitudinal grain and the words “FORECAST: PRETTY BLEAK Chris Bailey”; photo of a bone-white book cover with a centrally placed sculpture showing the head and neck of a pharaonic figure in burnished dark stone. Red text in three positions on the cover. Counterclockwise: “Unravel Tolu Oloruntoba Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize”; surrealistic cover featuring phosphorescent elements including intertwined mushrooms, a green serpent, purple leaves, and a bird with one black-running eye, and the text “poems,” “antibody,” and “Rebecca Salazar”

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 29/01/2025

My third collection of poems, UNRAVEL, will be published by McClelland & Stewart in Canada and the US on March 25. I am both excited and terrified to share it with the world. The cover was designed by Jennifer Griffiths.

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 05/11/2024

[Non-election coverage] I’m glad to be joining Joseph Kidney in this reveal of the cover of his debut collection, Devotional Forensics. Editing this striking book has certainly been a highlight of my year. Cover was designed by Julie Scriver for the Goose Lane's icehouse poetry imprint.

Predominantly red rectangular image against a white background. DEVOTIONAL FORENSICS, JOSEPH KIDNEY, and icehouse poetry respectively border the top, right, and lower portions of the image. Image is of a painting depicting a light-skinned figure with what appear to be upraised red-feathered wings, wearing a red long-sleeved robe with an ermine-spotted white collar with golden trim. One hand is at chest level while the other is in a gold-colored manacle beside gold-colored lace. The face is mostly obscured / vandalized by a series of overlapping scratches.

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 16/09/2024

Thanks for the opportunity to post this 1961 Yoruba edition. There’d have been no way to tastefully brag, otherwise. 😀

Photo of an orange book with white text: “Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmale” “D.O. Fagunwa” there is an image of a hunter with hunting gear at the lighter center of the cover.

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 17/04/2024

I might just have made a rookie error. Is this account you?

Screenshot of a post from @nikkimwalls.bsky.social

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 02/12/2023

Please welcome all-round great guy and poet of questioning, reckoning, and transformation: @allegorically.bsky.social “Safety Rules” is still my favourite poem of his, and I share it every chance I get.

Safety Rules
after Kyle Dargan

Treat every man as if he could be loaded. Always keep a man unloaded until you are ready to use him. Never point a man at anything unless you intend to destroy it. There are no second chances with a man. The purpose is to create safe man-handling habits, and to discourage presumptive reasoning along the lines of, “I know my man is unloaded so certain unsafe practices are okay.” In indoor areas where men will be handled often, a suitably safe direction should be designated. Wear, faulty assembly, damage or faulty design of the man can cause him not to function as intended. Men may undergo catastrophic failure (a “kaBoom”) due to various causes. Many families keep a man in the home. Young children are curious. Even if you have talked to them many times about man safety, they can’t truly understand how dangerous men are. If they come across a loaded man, they can accidentally hurt or kill themselves or someone else. Teens can be emotional and may act withou

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 27/10/2023

Dionne Brand, “Anti-Poetry” in “Chronicles of a Hostile Sun,” via “Nomenclature.”

“Some one at a party
drew me aside to tell me a lie
about my poems,
they said “you write well,
your use of language is remarkable”
Well if that was true, hell
would break loose by now,
colonies and fascist states would fall,
housework would be banned,
pregnant women would walk naked in the streets,
men would stay at home at night, cowering.
whoever it was, this trickster,
I wish they’d keep their damn lies
to themselves.”

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 02/09/2023

I have spent the last 5 weeks in Civitella Ranieri, a medieval castle in Umbria. It has been a very productive time. I'll presenting some of the poems I've written during this fellowship on Monday, September 4 @ 6PM CEST (noon EDT, 9AM PDT). Live on IG: instagram.com/civitellaran...

Photograph of a castle, showing two towers, with an open gate and green vegetation in the foreground. The sky is very blue.

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 19/08/2023

I'm watching the last few minutes of the season finale of Hijack. My watch thinks I'm having a cardiac event.

Photograph of a smart watch on a black person's hand. The watch face reads "High Heart Rate Your heart rate rose above 120 BPM while you seemed to be inactive for 10 minutes starting at 1:44 PM"

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Tolu Oloruntoba @tolu.ca · 01/08/2023

When one has a flight to catch in the morning.

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