Body found in search for missing poet Gboyega Odubanjo
Gboyega Odubanjo vanished over the weekend at Shambala festival
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Your support makes all the difference.A body has been found in the search for missing poet Gboyega Odubanjo who vanished over the weekend, police said.
Mr Odubanjo, 27, was scheduled to do a reading at the Shambala festival in Kelmarsh, Northamptonshire on Sunday but never showed up for his performance.
The Woolwich resident was last seen at the festival at around 4am on Saturday.
Northamptonshire Police said: “A body has sadly been found during the search for a 27-year-old man reported missing in Kelmarsh. Police officers made the discovery shortly before 9am on Thursday, August 31, in the course of a specialised search of the area.
“The man had been reported missing on Sunday, August 27, having last been seen at Shambala festival early the previous morning. While formal identification has yet to take place, the man’s family has been informed and are being supported by specially trained officers. There are not believed to be any suspicious circumstances surrounding his death.”
The search for Mr Odubanjo involved the use of police search dogs, specially-trained police search advisor officers, neighbourhood and response officers as well as a police dive team, and volunteer members of Northamptonshire Search and Rescue.
Following his disappearance, the 27-year-old’s family described him as a “loving and caring son who means the world to our family.”
He was a “warm and infectious personality” with “a contagious smile, and a heart full of kindness,” his family said.
They described his disappearance as “entirely out of character” and said he was in “a good mood and excited for the festival”.
Following Mr Odubanjo’s disappearance, his best friend, novelist and filmmaker Tice Cin, said. “He is the light of my life. We need help bringing him home, nobody deserves to go missing in a society with all the resources to find our loved ones.”
“Help us to find this brilliant kind man, the type of man who you can ring at 3am when your back is hurting and you can’t sleep. His future is so bright and we must rally together to bring him back to where he is loved and safe.”
Mr Odubanjo was a PhD student in creative writing at the University of Hertfordshire.
The 27-year-old was well-known on the UK poetry scene and his pamphlet, Aunty Uncle Poems, about culture and family relationships in London, won the Poetry Business New Poets prize in 2020. He also received an Eric Gregory award from the Society of Authors and a Michael Marks pamphlet prize.
An editor at Bad Betty Press and the poetry publication Bath Magg, his forthcoming collection, Adam, explores structural inequality when it comes to searching for missing Black people in the UK.
The anthology is inspired by the unsolved murder of “Adam”, an unidentified boy whose body was discovered in the River Thames in 2001.
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