"Judge Me on a Blank Page": Poetry that defies the norm

But form is only half the book. What Kehinde is really arguing for is a way of seeing people for who they are, beyond individually preconceived prejudice. He writes as a man who has carried three passports across three countries, and that movement has taught him that identity carries a lot of contexts that can be misconstrued. The insistence that nobody chooses their birthplace or their skin is the foundation on which every subsequent poem rests, and this foundation provides a premise for the poems about resemblance and migration.

Fatai Kehinde’s Judge Me on a Blank Page raises an age-long question about poetry: whether a poem must conform to a certain lyrical structure or whether it is allowed to take the shape of the voices in the author’s head, even when those voices defy the norm and perceived form that poetry is expected to take. Kehinde’s poetry chooses the latter, and the choice defines the book from its first to its last page.

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Line by line, the poems read more like a testimony than a lyric. The sentences are concise but direct. The use of imagery is sparse and indelible in the mind of the reader. Kehinde favours the declarative over the descriptive, stacking short lines that convey the author’s message through repetition rather than metaphor. In “Hate Is an Inheritance,” he writes of prejudice passed down like furniture, polished and displayed, and the image works because it is both mundane and relatable.

This directness is both the book’s strength and its limitation. When Kehinde interrogates guilt by resemblance, the plain style feels like a closing argument, blunt and undeniable to the reader. “One Person Is Not a People” reads like a mind reasoning its way out of prejudice, and the effect is persuasive. But when the same style explores tenderness in “Learning to Love My Reflection,” the plainness feels like caution rather than restraint. There is real craft in the anaphoric use of “I never chose” and “before I” constructions that give the collection its rhythm, functioning as an unconventional poetic device and the firm declaration accompanying a lawyer’s summation.

But form is only half the book. What Kehinde is really arguing for is a way of seeing people for who they are, beyond individually preconceived prejudice. He writes as a man who has carried three passports across three countries, and that movement has taught him that identity carries a lot of contexts that can be misconstrued. The insistence that nobody chooses their birthplace or their skin is the foundation on which every subsequent poem rests, and this foundation provides a premise for the poems about resemblance and migration.

This book feels timely rather than personal because society has a prevalent culture that often judges people by category before it knows them, whether through profiling, algorithmic sorting, or the shorthand of social media, where a single clip stands in for an entire people. Kehinde’s insistence on individual as opposed to collective identity pushes against the current. It is not a naive plea for niceness; rather, it is a demand that judgment be earned by evidence, not inherited from a stranger’s crime.

Kehinde is less interested in the ornamental structure of poetry, and readers who pick up this book in search of that alone may find themselves unsatisfied. However, those who seek poetry that convicts and is an instrument of change will find both in generous supply in this book.