Contemporary English language poetry by Black poets from around the world available at Crossett.
List of Consonants by
List of Consonants is a list of consonants with intervening vowels. The book is an ambient novella that explores what Wilson Harris calls "community-in-creator" by merging from-scratch text with found text and asking "what exactly is the difference?" By treating their own from-scratch text as though a stranger had written it, Abreu shows how little we know ourselves, and performs an authorial petite mort in honor of their friend, who died by suicide in 2013
After the Ceremonies by
Ama Ata Aidoo is one of the best-known African writers today. Spanning three decades of work, the poems in this collection address themes of colonialism, independence, motherhood, and gender in intimate, personal ways alongside commentary on broader social issues.
American Sublime: Poems by
A fourth collection of poems by the author recalls over a century of African American traditions, knitting together a blend of history, biography, personal experience, pop culture, and dreamscape.
God the Artist and Other Poems by
God the Artist and Other Poems is a work of art that resonates with the people of Cameroon, Africa and the world. The collection of over seventy poems celebrates humanity and human beauty. At the same time the poems remind humanity of and castigate its shortcomings.
In a Predicament All My Life. a Collection of Poems by
In A Predicament All My Life marks out some of the distressing ills of the postcolonial elite and the challenges of present-day African societies and cultures. The Poems in this collection bring into conversation precolonial Africa and Africa since colonialism. In particular, the poems explore Cameroon's predicament, its reunification traits, and its existential challenges.
The Promise of Hope by
Kofi Awoonor, one of Ghana's most accomplished poets, had for almost half a century committed himself to teaching, political engagement, and the literary arts. The one constant that guided and shaped his many occupations and roles in life was poetry. The Promise of Hope is a beautifully edited collection of some of Awoonor's most arresting work spanning almost fifty years.
Cape Verdean Blues by
The speaker in Cape Verdean Blues is an oracle walking down the street. Barbosa interrogates encounters and the weight of their space. Grounded in bodily experience and the phenomenology of femininity, this collection provides a sense of Cape Verdean identity. It uniquely captures the essence of “Sodade,” as it refers to the Cape Verdean American experience, and also the nostalgia and self-reflection one navigates through relationships lived, lost, and imagined.
The Drowning Boy's Guide to Water by
Ceaselessly honest and uncannily self-aware, the poems in The Drowning Boy’s Guide to Water dance between grace, music, and truth. With a voice that’s leaning in instead of away, this collection is a lively and necessary debut that cracks open the complications of skin color, love, and the natural world.
Travesty Generator by
Like a ghost in the machine, TRAVESTY GENERATOR remixes programming codes and turns them to ruminate on the intersections of race and gender. Rhythmic, hypnotic, and percussive, the poems are iterative and suggest the infinite recursions of nano data. The poems pay homage to lives taken too soon, those of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, pulls heroes like Harriet Tubman into the present, and offers the wisdoms spoken by Black mothers to their children.
Felon: Poems by
In fierce, agile poems, Felon tells the story of the effects of incarceration--canvassing a wide range of emotions and experiences through homelessness, underemployment, love, drug abuse, domestic violence, fatherhood, and grace--and, in doing so, creates a travelogue for an imagined life.
Conversion by
"With this book Remica Bingham joins the list of poets we have hoped for. She sees with a brave eye and hears the music of all our languages, validating each. Her story is the human story; her sharing it an act of great generosity." --Lucille Clifton
100 Days by
For 100 days, Juliane Okot Bitek recorded the lingering nightmare of the Rwandan genocide in a poem—each poem recalling the senseless loss of life and of innocence. Okot Bitek draws on her own family's experience of displacement under the regime of Idi Amin, pulling in fragments of the poetic traditions she encounters along the way.
Bury My Clothes by
Bury My Clothes is a meditation on violence, race, and the place in art at which they intersect. Artspecifically in oppressed communitiesis about survival, Roger Bonair-Agard asserts, and establishing personhood in a world that says you have none.
Elegguas by
For nearly half a century, Kamau Brathwaite has been doing nothing short of rewriting the relationship between Africa and the aging new world'--one exquisite and haunting syllable at a time. Elegguas, his newest book, is a tidalectic wave of remembrance and remonstrance. It is, as well, one of Brathwaite's most compassionate songs.
The New Testament by
The world of Jericho Brown's second book, disease runs through the body, violence runs through the neighborhood, memories run through the mind, trauma runs through generations. Almost eerily quiet in even the bluntest of poems, Brown gives us the ache of a throat that has yet to say the hardest thing-and the truth is coming on fast.
My Brother, My Sister by
Through her deceptive simplicity of diction, she explores the nooks and crannies of her psyche as well as her society�s. It is a poetry written from the depths of the heart that calls attention to the mystery and sacredness of the everyday. It therefore comes as no surprise that Loretta Burns and Bill F. Ndi, the Cameroonian-born poet with a fierce drive for global peace and the oneness of humanity, should collaborate on a collection of poems. With vibrancy and a sense of urgency, their lines evoke humanity's perpetual struggle for freedom and its search for meaning.
The Golden Underground by
New from poet Anthony Butts, a collection of modern free verse with an attention to formal syntax and a keen religious sensibility.
Mud Actor by
A childhood -- The mud actor -- La luna verde -- Gymnopédies -- Gnossiennes -- Three pieces in the form of a pear -- Nocturnes -- Typhoon -- The child you call Eeyore -- To dream the energy of clay -- Landscape with traveler -- The pillow -- Rumors -- Bound feet -- The servant (music and blindness) -- Stoic pose -- The blossoms -- The woman with the tangled hair -- The colors of another home -- The memory of Hiroshima
Living As a Lesbian by
Nothing lukewarm here. Cheryl Clarke writes variations on the themes of blackness, anger, violence, loss, loneliness, lesbianism, and sex. Her form is elegant, her language direct, her images strong. The impact is stunning.
The World Falls Away by
A nominee and finalist for Poet Laureate of California, she continues to reflect the ethnic scramble of Los Angeles, where she has been honored by proclamations from the city's elected officials, including the mayor's office, the city council and the Department of Cultural Affairs.
Bone by
A poignant collection of autobiographical poems about the heart, life, and the inner self. Bone. Visceral. Close to. Stark. The poems in Yrsa Daley-Ward's collection bone are exactly that: reflections on a particular life honed to their essence--so clear and pared-down, they become universal.
Weary Kingdom by
Dameron maps a journey across emotional, spiritual, and geographic lines, from the familiarity of the honeysuckle South to a new world, or a new kingdom—Harlem. Her poems traverse the streets of this Black mecca with a careful eye cast toward the intimacies of the exterior. Still, as the poems move throughout the built environment, they navigate matters of death, love, love loss, and family against the backdrop of a city that has yet to become home.
Crying in Hiccoughs by
Crying in Hiccoughs is a graphic presentation of the more realistic phase of Africa's politico-economic and historico-moral evolution in general, and Cameroon's, in particular. From the colonial to the post-independence era, the poet sees nothing worthy of praise-singing and handclapping. So, he resorts to crying in hiccoughs and invites the blind, deaf and dumb brainwashed praise-singers to join him in singing his little songs so as to expose and challenge the demagogy.
Return Flights by
These poems—varying from narrative to imagist to lyrical—reflect the “sodade” of Cape Verdean culture that is shaped by separation and longing—longing for the home that has been left behind and for loved ones who have departed. Cape Verdean communities extend beyond national boundaries and are paradoxically independent of place, even when inspired by it.
Duppy Conqueror by
Born in Ghana, raised in Jamaica, and educated in Canada, Kwame Dawes is a dynamic and electrifying poet. In this generous collection, new poems appear with the best work from fifteen previous volumes. Deeply nuanced in exploring the human condition, Dawes' poems are filled with complex emotion and consistently remind us what it means to be a global citizen.
When Rap Spoke Straight to God by
A book-length poem navigating belief, black lives, the tragedies of Trump, and the boundaries of being a woman. A mix of traditional forms where sonnets mash up with sestinas morphing to heroic couplets, When Rap Spoke Straight to God insists that while you may recognize parts of the poem's world, you can't anticipate how it will evolve.
TwERK by
TWERK unveils an identity shaped by popular media and history, code switching and cultural inclusivity. The poems, songs, and myths in this long-awaited first book are as rooted in lyric as in innovation, in Black music as in macaronic satire.
In the Color of My Skin: Poems by
In this collection, Doh straddles the Atlantic with voices that doubt, question, and lament the black predicament; voices that evoke the wisdom of Africa's cultural values in a manner reminiscent of the continent's orality. Like the echoing of the talking drums in the forests and the savannahs, these voices acknowledge the challenges and vexing truths of the hour: the plight of a people that have been buffeted repeatedly by waves of invasion, deceit, and betrayals, yet against which onslaught they remain standing, frighteningly tall in dignity and integrity.
Grace Notes by
With this her fourth book of poems - her first since winning the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry - Rita Dove expands her role as a leading voice in contemporary American letters. The title of the collection serves as an umbrella for the intimate concerns expressed in the forty-eight poems ; in music, grace notes are those added to the basic melody, the embellishments that - if played or sung at the right moment with just the right touch - can break your heart.
Trophic Cascade by
In a time of massive environmental degradation, violence and abuse of power, a world in which we all must survive, these poems resonate within and beyond the scope of the human realms, delicately balancing between conflicting loci of attention. Dwelling between vibrancy and its opposite, Dungy writes in a single poem about a mother, a daughter, Smokin'Joe Frazier, brittle stars, giant boulders, and a dead blue whale. These poems are written in the face of despair to hold an impossible love and a commitment to hope.
Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus by
Mount Carmel & The Blood of Parnassus thrusts us into the inquisitive, placing us into a state of lost and losing. Into darkness. In grasping what is, the work investigates what is not, what is unknown, coming to grips with absence to make space for new; “If you say no, then you exist as an oppositional idea, you become the ‘no.’
If One of Us Should Fall by
Winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize “Nicole Terez Dutton's fierce and formidable debut throbs with restless beauty and a lyrical undercurrent that is both empowered and unpredictable. Every poem is unsettling in that delicious way that changes and challenges the reader. There is nothing here that does not hurtle forward.
The Autobiography of a Jukebox: Poems by
Presents a collection of poems, including "Money Won't Change It," "Rodney King Blues," and "Small Moments."
The January Children by
“The January Children are the generation born in Sudan under British occupation, where children were assigned birth years by height, all given the birth date January 1.” What follows is a deeply personal collection of poems that describe the experience of navigating the postcolonial world as a stranger in one's own land.The January Children depicts displacement and longing while also questioning accepted truths about geography, history, nationhood, and home.
Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems by
Skin, Inc. is Thomas Sayers Ellis's big, ambitious argument in sound and image for an America whose identity is in need of repair. In lyric sequences and with his own photographs, Ellis traverses the African American and American literary landscapes--along the way adding race fearlessness to past and present literary styles and themes, and perform-a-forming tributes for the Godfather of Soul, James Brown; the King of Pop, Michael Jackson; and the election of President Barack Obama.
Head off and Split: Poems by
With Head Off & Split, Nikky Finney establishes herself as one of the most eloquent, urgent, fearless and necessary poets writing in America today. What makes this book as important as anything published in the last decade is the irresistible music, the formal dexterity and the imaginative leaps she makes with metaphor and language in these simply stunning poems.
Forest Primeval by
nother Anti-Pastoral," the opening poem of Forest Primeval, confesses that sometimes "words fail." With a "bleat in [her] throat," the poet identifies with the voiceless and wild things in the composed, imposed peace of the Romantic poets with whom she is in dialogue. Vievee Francis's poems engage many of the same concerns as her poetic predecessors--faith in a secular age, the city and nature, aging, and beauty.
Madman at Kilifi by
Clifton Gachagua's collection Madman at Kilifi, winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, concerns itself with the immediacy of cultures in flux, cybercommunication and the language of consumerism, polyglot politics and intrigue, sexual ambivalence and studied whimsy, and the mind of a sensitive, intelligent, and curious poet who stands in the midst of it all.
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude is a sustained meditation on that which goes away—loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it—that tries to find solace in the processes of the garden and the orchard. That is, this is a book that studies the wisdom of the garden and orchard, those places where all—death, sorrow, loss—is converted into what might, with patience, nourish us.
When the Ghosts Come Ashore by
Germain’s poems situate St. Louis as the archetypal American city: it’s here she explores the intersections of race, gender, and violence, here she finds the ghosts of those who still hunger for freedom. But Germain still carves out space for love. As Phillip B. Williams writes of these poems, “Placelessness is the place, leaving only the unsafety of flesh as a hideout. Black presences break from the margins and pierce through these hard lyrics.”
The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni by
Partial contents: Black feeling black talk/black judgement -- Re: creation -- Broadside: poem of Angela Yvonne Davis -- My house -- The women and the men -- Cotton candy on a rainy day -- Those who ride the night winds -- Occasional poem: a poem for langston hughes -- Occasional poem: but since you finally asked.
The Black Maria by
Taking its name from the moon's dark plains, misidentified as seas by early astronomers, The Black Maria investigates African diasporic histories, the consequences of racism within American culture, and the question of human identity. Central to this project is a desire to recognize the lives of Eritrean refugees who have been made invisible by years of immigration crisis, refugee status, exile, and resulting statelessness.
Signs along the Road: Poems by 
Think of Lampedusa by
A collection of serial poems, Think of Lampedusa addresses the 2013 shipwreck that killed 366 Africans attempting to migrate secretly to Lampedusa, an Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea. The crossing from North Africa to this island and other Mediterranean way stations has become the most dangerous migrant route in the world. Interested in what is producing such epic displacement, Josué Guébo's poems combine elements of history and mythology.
Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity by
In Spill, self-described queer Black troublemaker and Black feminist love evangelist Alexis Pauline Gumbs present a commanding collection of scenes depicting fugitive Black women and girls seeking freedom from gendered violence and racism. In this poetic work inspired by Hortense Spillers, Gumbs offers an alternative approach to Black feminist literary criticism, historiography, and the interactive practice of relating to the words of Black feminist thinkers.
Call and Response: Poems by 
Booker T and Them: A Blues by
A poetic reimagining of the life of Booker T. Washington that explores issues of being an African American male of note at the beginning of the twentieth century.
American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by
In seventy poems bearing the same title, Terrance Hayes explores the meanings of American, of assassin, and of love in the sonnet form. These poems are haunted by the country's past and future eras and errors, its dreams and nightmares
Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry by
Ceremonies offers provocative commentary on highly charged topics such as Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs of African-American men, feminism among men, and AIDS in the black community.
Unslakable by
Temperance -- Salem -- Blueberry picking -- Seeing my father's penis -- February cover -- Keeping up appearances -- Point Reyes -- Dozen --Psiocybin -- A girl & her dog -- Mirabella pool -- Life science -- Nude beach -- In the walk-in -- Honing -- Learning about boys -- Autumn -- My mother rolls us a joint when she visits me in California -- Our bike trip.
Hollywood Forever by
Poem texts superimposed over a variety of primary sources, facilitating a living conversation between the poet and her historical context.
Sleeper Hold by
Interdisciplinary artist Jibade-Khalil Huffman's third collection of deceptively flippant poems is a jam of ventriloquy and frequencies and the plainest vernacular of our day: celebrity and low-brow entertainment and high aspirations for seeing and knowing, whiteness and blackness and the cryptic laughs available to us in the gray areas of our cultural containment. Huffman's poems are abject, catchy, and ashy.
Eni and Other Poems by
Eni kaleidoscopically unveils human intrigues, predicaments and woes. It brings into sharp focus the most dreaded products of cruel oppression, exploitation, and destruction—the worst forms of human degradation and sufferings. However, it also sheds beams of hope, celebrating optimism in the struggle and eventually opening the curtain to the stage of victory of the oppressed and impoverished under the shameless sky.
Roll Deep by
The poems in Roll Deep are whimsical, urbane, and introspective, seeking a rhythmic sound that expresses the realities of the twenty-first century. Whether about child soldiers in Dadaab, a refugee camp in East Kenya, or human intimacy, the poems build community across borders of language and style.
Just for a Thrill: Poems by
echniques of detour and indirection productively encounter an aesthetic of sampling, quotation, and juxtaposition, a language-foregrounding tack that draws a range of domains and discourses into its mix. Song titles, clichés, catch phrases, bureaucratic boilerplate, advertising jargon, office chat, song lyrics, legalese, and other components of the linguistic atmosphere we live in find their way into the work, suggesting an overmediated, gone-before-it-gets-here present.
The Glory Gets by
In her fourth and most accomplished collection, Jeffers turns to the task of seeking and reconciling the blues and its three movements—identification, exploration, and resolution—with wisdom. Poems in The Glory Gets ask, “What happens on the road to wisdom? What now in this bewildering place?” Using the metaphor of “gets”—the concessional returns of living—Jeffers travels this fraught yet exhilarating journey, employing unexpected improvisations while navigating womanhood.
Olio by
With ambitious manipulations of poetic forms, Tyehimba Jess presents the sweat and story behind America's blues, worksongs and church hymns. Part fact, part fiction, Jess's much anticipated second book weaves sonnet, song, and narrative to examine the lives of mostly unrecorded African American performers directly before and after the Civil War up to World War I.
Beating the Graves by
The poems in Tsitsi Ella Jaji's Beating the Graves meditate on the meaning of living in diaspora, an experience increasingly common among contemporary Zimbabweans. Vivid evocations of the landscape of Zimbabwe filter critiques of contemporary political conditions and ecological challenges, veiled in the multiple meanings of poetic metaphor.
Prelude to Bruise by
A dark night of the soul presented as the finest of evening gowns, these poems pulse with an elemental sensuality that recalls Rimbaud's Venus Anadyomene and the best of Southern Gothic writing. Using a personal symbology of femininity, violence, and the history of black America, Jones weaves a coming-of-age tale that is both terrible and revelatory.
M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A: poems by
Jordan intersperses poems about African-Americans who won more lasting public acclaim, among them Richard Pryor, Josephine Baker and the great labor organizer and orator A. Philip Randolph. Jordan's most quotable poems, however, return to the voice of the 13-year-old speller, who "learned the word chiaroscuro/ By rolling it on my tongue// Like cotton candy the color/ Of day and night."
Patient by
Bettina Judd's phenomenal debut poetry collection, PATIENT., is about recovery in many senses: recovery of the subjectivity of several historical figures, through the recovery, reconstitution, and telling of their stories--among them Anarcha Westcott, Betsey Harris, Lucy Zimmerman, Joice Heth, Saartjie Baartman, and Henrietta Lacks, who were infamously 'patients' or subjects of inspection and 'plunder' .
Bestiary by
Across this remarkable first book are encounters with animals, legendary beasts, and mythological monsters--half human and half something else. Donika Kelly's Bestiary is a catalogue of creatures--from the whale and ostrich to the pegasus and chimera to the centaur and griffin. Among them too are poems of love, self-discovery, and travel, from "Out West" to "Back East.
Rock/Salt/Stone by
Winner of the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Poetry. ROCK | SALT | STONE sprays life–preserving salt through the hard realities of rocks, stones, and rockstones used as anchors, game pieces, or weapons. The manuscript travels through Africa, the Caribbean, and the USA, including cultures and varieties of English from all of those places.
Ending in Planes by
The poems ask the reader to receive the word without expectation, as playful utterance and sometimes allegory shaped at the horizons of the page. The collection performs hybridity as a collision between a rolling landscape of places—Seville, Boston, Pittsburgh, St. Martin—and a speaker who at times addresses the reader directly and "means for you to answer."
Last Seen by
Inspired by actual case histories of long-term missing African American children, this provocative and heartrending collection of poems evokes the experience of what it means to be among the missing in contemporary America. This thought-provoking collection of persona poems looks at absence from the standpoint of the witnesses surrounding the void and offers an intimate depiction of those impossible moments of aftermath lived by those who remain accounted for and present.
The Emperor of Water Clocks by
"If I am not Ulysses, I am / his dear, ruthless half brother." So announces Yusef Komunyakaa early in his lush collection. And Ulysses is but one of the characters the author conjures over the course of this densely lyrical book. Here his speaker observes a doomed court jester; here another recalls Napoleon as the emperor "tells the doctor to cut out his heart / & send it to the empress, Marie-Louise"; and here he is just a man, reflecting on why he'd "rather die a poet / than a warrior."
Black Body Amnesia: Poems and Other Speech Acts by
Blending poetry and memoir, conversation and performance theory, Black Body Amnesia: Poems and Other Speech Acts enlivens a personal archive of visual and verbal offerings written and organized by jaamil olawale kosoko. Inspired by Audre Lorde’s concept of biomythography, kosoko mixes personal history, biography, and mythology to tell a complex narrative rooted within a queer, Black, self-defined imagination.
Boy with Thorn by
In a landscape at once the brutal American South as it is the brutal mind, Boy with Thorn interrogates the genesis of all poetic creation—the imagination itself, questioning what role it plays in both our fascinations with and repulsion from a national history of racial and sexual violence. The personal and political crash into one language here, gothic as it is supple, meditating on visual art and myth, to desire, the practice of lynching and Hurricane Katrina.
Voyage of the Sable Venus by
A stunning poetry debut: this meditation on the black female figure throughout time introduces us to a brave and penetrating new voice. Robin Coste Lewis's electrifying collection is a triptych that begins and ends with lyric poems considering the roles desire and race play in the construction of the self. The central panel is the title poem, 'Voyage of the Sable Venus, ' a riveting narrative made up entirely of titles of artworks from ancient times to the present--titles that feature or in some way comment on the black female figure in Western art.
Splay Anthem by
Published in installments across several decades, Mackey's two epic series--one called Mu, the other Song of the Andoumboulou--bring the attitudes of free jazz and the reverberating patterns of West African ensemble music to the goals of the American encyclopedic long poem á la Charles Olson.
From Now On by
In From Now On, a retrospective of poems from the 1950s to the present—including selections from each of Major's previous books of poetry as well as a generous selection of new poems—Major creates a vivid gallery of nimbly drawn characters. Here he establishes a voice that is singular and musical, one that draws witty, moving, and empathetic portraits of African American urban and country dwellers. Ultimately, this collection maintains Major's intimate, conversational poetry while simultaneously becoming more eclectic, multicultural, and cosmopolitan.
Wild Hundreds by
Wild Hundreds is a long love song to Chicago. The book celebrates the people, culture, and places often left out of the civic discourse and the travel guides. Wild Hundreds is a book that displays the beauty of black survival and mourns the tragedy of black death.
Good Stock Strange Blood by
From Good Stock Strange Blood: And, yet, each morning a fireheart grief in the body coming out of sleep. The listening to the smoke as if fills and weeps inside the chest, choking strength out hands weighted, dangling. We wonder where else it lives before it fills the body up. We assume it comes inside through the hole that promises invasion.
Map to the Stars by
A resonant new collection of poetry from Adrian Matejka, author of The Big Smoke, a finalist for The Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award Map to the Stars, the fourth poetry collection from National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist Adrian Matejka, navigates the tensions between race, geography, and poverty in America during the Reagan Era.
Simulacra by
Matthews's superb collection explores the topic of want and desire with power, insight, and intense emotion. Her poems cross historical boundaries and speak emphatically from a racialized America, where the trajectories of joy and exploitation, striving and thwarting, violence and celebration are constrained by differentials of privilege and contemporary modes of communication.
Hum by
In May's debut collection, poems buzz and purr like a well-oiled chassis. Grit, trial, and song thrum through tight syntax and deft prosody. From the resilient pulse of an abandoned machine to the sinuous lament of origami animals, here is the ever-changing hum that vibrates through us all, connecting one mind to the next.
Shadows from the Abyss by
This is the first volume of a patriotic poet whose heart is on fire. The poems touch on a variety of issues, some personal and private, other public - past and current. They range from family, love and longing; friendship and marriage, to culture, politics, corruption and death. They are cadenced and vibrant with different emotions: nostalgia, regret and outrage; loss, pain and pathos tinged with a touch of wistfulness and irony.
The Animal Too Big to Kill by
This collection, winner of the 2014 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor's Choice Award, further establishes Shane McCrae as an indispensible poetic voice. With his unmistakable cadences, he probes insistently yet big-heartedly into some paradoxes of belief and righteousness, confronting God from the quagmire of his upbringing: half-Black and raised by White supremacists.
Ota Benga under My Mother's Roof by
In Ota Benga under My Mother's Roof, Carrie Allen McCray (1913–2008) uses poignant and personal verse to trace the ill-fated life of the Congolese pygmy who was famously exhibited in the Bronx Zoo in 1906 before being taken in by the McCray family of Lynchburg, Virginia. Rooted in the rich historical and autobiographic context of her own experiences with Benga, McCray offers compelling, dexterous poems that place Benga's story within the racial milieu of the early twentieth century as the burgeoning science of social anthropology worked to classify humans based on race and culture.
The Book of Landings by
The Book of Landings brings together the second and third parts of Mark McMorris's visionary trilogy “Auditions for Utopia,”—initiated in Entrepôt—and marks two stages in the evolution of the poet's conception of space. The first stage of the collection is the entrepôt, a space where disparate vectors of identity congregate, come into conflict, and finally merge into hybrid forms. The poetry follows a trajectory of diaspora, or exile, instigated by conquest, colonialism, wars, and political defeat in the search for Utopia.
Querencias = Homing Instincts by
In this bilingual volume of poetry by world famous Afro-Cuban belle des letres Nancy Morejón, the power of her lyrical voice mesmerizes. Most of the poems have never before appeared in English, and here Pamela Carmell's delicate touch does tribute to their depth and intricacy. The theme of the collection is love, in all its forms- from romantic love, to familial affection, to patriotic fervor. Known as a feminist and a powerfully political player of the Cuban Revolution, Morejón reveals a different side of herself here.
Small Congregations: New and Selected Poems by
Thylias Moss is a major figure in contemporary American poetry. Thylias Moss names the black truths behind white lies. These poems are angry, defiant, yet informed with a sense of the sacred in their images, in their language, in their mimesis of transcendent ritual in everyday life. Here is a writer who speaks bitterness and makes her own music of it.
The Service Porch by
Moten (The Little Edges) fuses high and pop culture in a new collection that is as varied and malleable as his vernacular. The poems often feel like disparate fragments stitched together and can initially appear impenetrable. But the work is anything but haphazard and it becomes clear that the needlework was done with care and attention to detail.
Sleeping with the Dictionary by
The abecedarian offspring of her collaboration with two of the poet's most seductive writing partners, Roget's thesaurus and the American Heritage dictionary. The poet is aware that while Roget's seems obsessed with categories and hierarchies, American Heritage, whatever its faults, was compiled with the assistance of a democratic panel that included black poets Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps, as well as feminist author and editor Gloria Steinem.
Echoes of a Whisper by
Lughano Mwangwegho's Echoes of a Whisper is an imaginative array of poetic verse steeped in Africa and tackling the fraught space of being betwixt and between, within and without, memory and the present. Love runs avidly as a theme throughout and imagery thereof is at once beautiful and absurd, adding further to a sense of suspension, a sense of unease. Mwangwegho's poetry is edgy: its colour is that of tension.
Faster Than Light by
Conjuring numerous voices and characters across oceans and centuries, Faster Than Light explores widely disparate experiences through the lens of traditional poetic forms. This volume contains a selection of Marilyn Nelson's new and uncollected poems as well as work from each of her lyric histories of eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century African American individuals and communities.
Pride Aside and Other Poems by
Even though Ndi's poems seem to clearly draw inspiration from everyday life, almost all the poems are structured as sonnets. Through the lines of the various poems in this collection, influences of poets from different schools of poetic creativity and streams of inspiration resonate. They bring to mind the metaphysical poets, the Romantics, the Symbolists, the Confessionalists, poets of the Beat Generation, Committed poetry, etc.
Blot on the Landscape by
Blot On The Landscape is John Ngong Kum Ngong's seventh collection of poetry. The central symbol here is "blot" which takes on complex and fascinating meanings in this rich collection of 42 poems. At a time when concerns for the environment increasingly receive global attention, the collection expresses and problematises the way in which the environment in particular and the landscape in general are treated.
Logotherapy by
Written as a tribute to family, place, and bodily awareness, Mukoma Wa Ngugi's poems speak of love, war, violence, language, immigration, and exile. From a baby girl's penchant for her parents'keys to a warrior's hunt for words, Wa Ngugi's poems move back and forth between the personal and the political. In the frozen tundra of Wisconsin, the biting winds of Boston, and the heat of Nairobi, Wa Ngugi is always mindful of his physical experience of the environment.
Born with Voice by
Born with Voice examines the psyche and scrape of the victims of various crimes, especially sexual discrimination: exploitation, rape, and the killing of people with albinism. The author digs deeper into the hearts and minds, and plights of victims to inspire the society to stand with, and support them. The book offers some nuggets such as, understanding the phenomenon, confronting it and stopping wars that cause sufferings such as rape and death.
All Souls: Essential Poems by
All Souls: Essential Poems brings together work that reflects the interweaving of history, memory, and the indelible bonds between living and dead that has marked the output of Louisiana Poet Laureate Emerita Brenda Marie Osbey. Comprising poems written and published over the span of four decades, this thematic collection highlights the unity of Osbey's voice and narrative intent.
The Kitchen-Dweller's Testimony by
Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, The Kitchen-Dweller's Testimony asks: Whose testimony is valid? Whose testimony is worth recording? Osman's speakers, who are almost always women, assert and reassert in an attempt to establish authority, often through persistent questioning. Specters of race, displacement, and colonialism are often present in her work, providing momentum for speakers to reach beyond their primary, apparent dimensions and better communicate.
Digest by
Rich in intertextuality, 'Digest' improvises form and contemplates the canon while pushing us to question the identities we create.
There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé by
There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé uses political and pop-cultural references as a framework to explore 21st century black American womanhood and its complexities: performance, depression, isolation, exoticism, racism, femininity, and politics. The poems weave between personal narrative and pop-cultural criticism, examining and confronting modern media, consumption, feminism, and Blackness.
The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon by
Through dream song and elegy, alternate takes and tempos, prizewinning poet Willie Perdomo's third collection crackles with vitality and dynamism as it imagines the life of a percussionist, rebuilding the landscape of his apprenticeship, love, diaspora, and death. At the beginning of his infernal journey, Shorty Bon Bon recalls his live studio recording with a classic 1970s descarga band, sharing his recollection with an unidentified poet.
White Blood by
Kiki Petrosino turns her gaze to Virginia, where she digs into her genealogical and intellectual roots, while contemplating the knotty legacies of slavery and discrimination in the Upper South
Silverchest by
In Silverchest, his twelfth book, Carl Phillips considers how our fears and excesses, the damage we cause both to others and to ourselves, intentional and not, can lead not only to a kind of wisdom but also to renewal, maybe even joy, if we're willing to commit fully to a life in which "I love you / means what, exactly?"
Heaven by
Swerving elegantly from humor to heartbreak, from Colorado to Florida, from Dante's Paradise to Homer's Illiad, from knowledge to ignorance to awe, Phillips turns his gaze upward and outward, probing and upending notions of the beyond.
I'm So Fine: a List of Famous Men & What I Had On: a Narrative by
Part 1980s and 1990s nostalgia, part exuberant storytelling,this book turns a sharply humorous magnifying glass onto gendered interactions in daily life, framed primarily by random celebrity encounters in Los Angeles. Far from a narrative of fame-chasing or conceit, however, it addresses what it means for a woman to fight for dignity and survival in an often hostile environment, to come into her own power as she decides what she wants for herself '& mostly gets its every fineness.
Citizen: An American Lyric by
Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV -- everywhere, all the time.
To See the Earth Before the End of the World by
Winner of the Voelcker Award (PEN America) (2016)In To See the Earth Before the End of the World Ed Roberson presents us with 120 new poems, each speaking in his unique voice and seen through his unique eye. Earth and sky, neighborhood life and ancient myths, the art of seeing and the architecture of the imagination are all among the subjects of these poems.
The Black Back-Ups by
This book is a collection of Kate Rushin's poetry. The author attempts to capture the faces, voices, feelings, words, and stories of her African-American family, people in the neighborhood and town where she grew up.
Love Is Not a Consolation: It Is a Light: Poems by 
Red Beans and Ricely Yours: Poems by
These narrative poems tell the day-to-day lives of Black New Orleans and the rare magic in the culture. Vibrant with local history and color, these poems have a Black sensibility that reaches beyond boundaries, with folk sayings turned into polished verse. From Black talk to verse forms, Mona Lisa Saloy never loses sight of the African-American cultural roots of her community. She makes music in verse.
Like the Singing Coming off the Drums: Love Poems by
Here is a collection of new love poems from Sonia Sanchez. In haiku, tanka, and sensual blues, Sanchez writes of the many forms love takes: burning, dreamy, disappointed, and vulnerable. In three sections - Naked in the Streets, Shake Loose My Skin, and In This Wet Season - she takes us from the most intimate landscapes of passion to its public celebration in love poems dedicated to icons of our age, including Tupac Shakur and Ella Fitzgerald.
Indecency by
Indecency is boldly and carefully executed and perfectly ragged. In these poems, Justin Phillip Reed experiments with language to explore inequity and injustice and to critique and lament the culture of white supremacy and the dominant social order. Political and personal, tender, daring, and insightful--the author unpacks his intimacies, weaponizing poetry to take on masculinity, sexuality, exploitation, and the prison industrial complex and unmask all the failures of the structures into which society sorts us.
King Me by
In this riveting debut, Reeves argues that black history is human history, and the suffering belongs to all of us. From a horse witnessing the lynching of Emmett Till to Mikhail Bulgakov chronicling the forced famines in Poland in the 1930s, King Me examines the erotics of care and the place of song, elegy, and praise as testaments to those moments.
Into Each Room We Enter Without Knowing by
Shanahan explores what it means to be fully human in our wounded and divided world. In poised yet unrelenting lyric poems, Shanahan—queer and mixed-race—confronts the challenges of a complex cultural inheritance, informed by colonialism and his mother's immigration to the United States from Morocco, navigating racial constructs, sexuality, family, and the globe in search of “who we are to each other... who we are to ourselves.”
Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by
What elevates 'teaching my mother how to give birth', what gives the poems their disturbing brilliance, is Warsan Shire's ability to give simple, beautiful eloquence to the veiled world where sensuality lives in the dominant narrative of Islam; reclaiming the more nuanced truths of earlier times - as in Tayeb Salih's work - and translating to the realm of lyric the work of the likes of Nawal El Saadawi.
The New Black by
Smart, grounded, and lyrical, Evie Shockley's the new black integrates powerful ideas about "blackness," past and present, through the medium of beautifully crafted verse. the new black sees our racial past inevitably shaping our contemporary moment, but struggles to remember and reckon with the impact of generational shifts: what seemed impossible to people not many years ago for example, the election of an African American president will have always been a part of the world of children born in the new millennium.
Fushsia by
Shiferraw's Fuchsia examines conceptions of the displaced, disassembled, and nomadic self. Embedded in her poems are colors, elements, and sensations that evoke painful memories related to deep-seated remnants of trauma, war, and diaspora. Yet rooted in these losses and dangers also lie opportunities for mending and reflecting, evoking a distinct sense of hope.
Serurubele : Poems by
Johannesburg performance-poet Katleho Kano Shoro puts her stage presence into print with this metapoetic debut collection that captures the cadences of her fearless voice, her unassuming sense of humour, and her enthusiasm for an Afrocentric literary culture. Katleho reflects on creativity, on the writing, reading and performance of poetry, exploring the language that structures it, the forces that inspire it and the transformation that follows our experience of it.
Bend to It by
Kevin Simmonds is a writer and musician originally from New Orleans. His books include Mad for Meat (Salmon Poetry) and Ota Benga Under my Mother's Roof (University of South Carolina). He edited Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality (Sibling Rivalry Press). He has composed numerous musical works for voice and chamber ensemble, as well as for stage productions such as Emmett Till, and the documentary HOPE: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica.
Counting Descent by
Counting Descent is a coming of age story that seeks to complicate our conception of lineage and tradition. Smith explores the cognitive dissonance that results from belonging to a community that unapologetically celebrates black humanity while living in a world that often renders blackness a caricature of fear. His poems move fluidly across personal and political histories, all the while reflecting on the social construction of our lived experiences.
Don't Call Us Dead by
Smith's unflinching poetry addresses race, class, sexuality, faith, social justice, mortality, and the challenges of living HIV positive at the intersection of black and queer identity. The collection opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved on earth.
Blood Dazzler: Poems by
In minute-by-minute detail, this award-winning book tracks Hurricane Katrina’s transformation into a full-blown mistress of destruction. From August 23, 2005, the day Tropical Depression 12 developed, through August 28 when it became a Category 5 storm with its “scarlet glare fixed on the trembling crescent,” to the heartbreaking aftermath, these poems evoke the horror that unfolded in New Orleans as America watched on television.
Life on Mars by
A collection of poems in which Tracy K. Smith examines the discoveries, failures, and oddities of humans.
Thrall: Poems by
By unflinchingly charting the intersections of public and personal history, Thrall explores the historical, cultural, and social forces-across time and space-that determine the roles consigned to a mixed-race daughter and her white father. In a vivid series of poems about interracial marriage depicted in the Casta Paintings of Colonial Mexico, Trethewey investigates the philosophical assumptions that underpin Enlightenment notions of taxonomy and classification, exposing the way they encode ideas of race within our collective imagination.
Avalanche by
A collection of poems in which award-winning African-American poet Quincy Troupe explores the sacred and the everyday.
Questions for Ada by
Umebinyuo’s poetry is a flower that will blossom in the spirit of every reader as she shares her heart with raw candor. From lyrical lushness to smoky sensuality to raw truths, this tome of transforming verse is the book every woman wants to write but can’t until the broken mirrors of their lives have healed. In this gifted author’s own words—“I am too full of life to be half-loved.”
Magnum Opus: A Tribute to Ntarikon by
In this long poem, Vakunta cries out poignantly against social dystopia and the deplorable moments lived by members of the Social Democratic Front (SDF) at Ntarikon Park on May 26, 1990. One cannot read this poem without feeling the despair and helplessness experienced by members of this political party as they were maimed, killed and reminded that the future holds no good for them.
Open Interval by
Drawing upon intersections of astronomy and mathematics, history, literature, and lived experience, the poems in Open Interval locate the self in the interval between body and name.
The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013 by
A collection spanning the range of the writer's career includes his first published poem, his celebrated verses on violence in Africa, his mature work from "The Star-Apple Kingdom," and his late masterpieces from "White Egrets.
Hard Times Require Furious Dancing: New Poems by
Though we have encountered our share of grief and troubles on this earth, we can still hold the line of beauty, form, and beat. No small accomplishment in a world as challenging as this one." So writes Alice Walker in this new book of poems, poems composed over the course of one year in response to joy and sorrow both personal and global: the death of loved ones, war, the deliciousness of love, environmental devastation, the sorrow of rejection, greed, poverty, and the sweetness of home. The poems embrace our connections while celebrating the joy of individuality, the power we each share to express our truest, deepest selves.
The Government of Nature by
In The Government of Nature, Afaa Michael Weaver explores the trauma of his childhood—including sexual abuse—using a'cartography and thematic structure drawn from Chinese spiritualism.'Weaver is a practitioner of Daoism, and this collection deals directly with the abuse in the context of Daoist renderings of nature as metaphor for the human body.
When the Wanderers Come Home by
Described by African scholar and literary critic Chielozona Eze as “one of the most prolific African poets of the twenty-first century,” Patricia Jabbeh Wesley composed When the Wanderers Come Home during a four-month visit to her homeland of Liberia in 2013. She gives powerful voice to the pain and inner turmoil of a homeland still reconciling itself in the aftermath of multiple wars and destruction.
Of Being Dispersed by
White's poetry the action is always multiple, palpable, sounding as thought, coming forward through this highly sensitized plane, sudden and hovering, exchanging centers, afflicted and added to by company. The continuous listening company demands--company including imaginary self, receding boundaries, the horseman on the night's street, the live, the loved, the drunk, the words, the turnstile--and the rendering of that listening into irreducible depths of tone, wit, and perception.
Silencer by
Welcome to Marcus Wicker's Midwest, where the muzzle is always on and where silence and daily microaggressions can chafe away at the faith of a young man grieved by images of gun violence and police brutality in twenty-first-century America. Precisely contradictory, bittersweet, witty, and heartbreaking, Silencer is where the political and the personal collide.
Thief in the Interior by
Phillip B. Williams investigates the dangers of desire, balancing narratives of addiction, murders, and hate crimes with passionate, uncompromising depth. Formal poems entrenched in urban landscapes crack open dialogues of racism and homophobia rampant in our culture. Multitudinous voices explore one's ability to harm and be harmed, which uniquely juxtaposes the capacity to revel in both experiences.
Monk Eats an Afro by
Cracks open a blueswoman's purse of poem and songs, bursting folk poetry for the millennium. Lush, lively smak-talk pulsates with jazz cadences, afrofuturistic impulses, and recollections of epic women. These poems holler, scat, chant, and eulogize on their way to the midwife, sometimes by bus, sometimes on foot, always on time
The Fourth Masquerade by
As one of the most important Nigerian poets who continue to write the nation in verse, Yeibo, in this fifth collection of poems, has strategically fashioned a kind of poetry that does not only derive its idiom from the prosody and folk tradition of the Izon of Nigeria, it equally advances the poet's vision through form and structure.
The Blues Don't Change: New and Selected Poems by 
Brown: Poems by
Divided into "Home Recordings" and "Field Recordings," Brown speaks to the way personal experience is shaped by culture, while culture is forever affected by the personal, recalling a black, Kansas boyhood to comment on our times.
