Poetry

My interest in poetry began in elementary school. Like many children, it started with love poems. First reciting the dorky "Roses are red" poems, then developed my own distinct lines. I was a quiet and shy kid but when I put pen to paper, I was bold and...

From the author of The Chaos of Longing comes a powerful second collection in which Robinson uses the metaphor of water to tell a story about achieving wholeness through letting go. Organized in three sections, Submerge explores immersion in and release...

Winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, selected by Major JacksonThe stub of your left leg danglesas I hold you up, my hands inserted under your armslike a child. You are complaining about the itch, the burn; scratch the ghost of your calf and heel...

Cherene Sherrard's poetry collection Vixen takes to task the historical narratives and artistic mediums that have shaped racial and gender identity. She asks her readers to closely examine the hand that guides the pen, the photographer behind the lens,...

A debut collection featuring formally diverse poems that address topics from misogyny and mental health to race and identity. Alexis Sears's debut collection, Out of Order, is a collage of unapologetic intimacy, risk-taking vulnerability, and unwavering...

A poetry collection that celebrates Black culture, creativity, and memory. From Kendrick to Kanye, to a Sunday in Oakland with Frank Ocean's falsetto in the foreground, Mausoleum of Flowers is still life set against the backdrop of demise. Daniel...

Borrowing from Romare Bearden's aesthetic palette and inspired by his Odysseus series, Bearden's Odyssey gathers, for the first time, poems from thirty-five of the most revered African diaspora poets in the United States. Poetic echoes come forth in...

Poems and photographs collide in this intimate collection, challenging the invisible, indefinable ways mourning takes up residence in a body, both before and after life-altering loss.In radiant poems--set against the evocative and desperate backdrop of...

A stunning collection that traverses the borders of culture and time, from the 2011 winner of the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award In House of Lords and Commons, the revelatory and vital new collection of poems from the winner of the 2013 Whiting Writers' Award...

Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot PrizeFinalist for the Forward Prize for Best CollectionThe extraordinary new poetry collection by Tracy K. Smith, the Poet Laureate of the United States Even the men in black armor, the onesJangling handcuffs and keys,...