Poetry

2000 Blacks probes the complexity of economic and politically motivated migration from Africa, which has been referred to as "African Brain Drain." In the first sequence of poems, Ajibola Tolase explores Africa's history and encounters with the Western...

"A husband reads his dead wife's poems to a spare crowd, while cannibals go hungry with no one to invite to dinner. Whether bearing witness to the torment of a mother who drowns her own children, or to the quiet sorrows of daughters mourning their mother...

A debut collection of lyric poems interrogating the generational implications of the Great Migration to Northern California. Ankle-Deep in Pacific Water, a debut collection by E. Hughes, marries personal narrative with historical excavation to articulate...

Anthology of new work honoring the legacy of a celebrated African American poetThis carefully and generously curated mosaic of essays, letters, and poems reveals the profound impact that poet Yusef Komunyakaa has had on poets, educators, and readers...

"Breezes blowin' middlin' brisk, / Snowflakes thro' the air a-whisk, / Fallin' kind o' soft an' light, /Not enough to make things white, / But jest sorter siftin' down / So 's to cover up the brown /Of the dark world's rugged ways / 'N' make things look...

Winner of the Blessing the Boats SelectionForeword by Aracelis GirmayCharleen McClure's d-sorientation wanders the landscape of loss with a weathered eye and a clenched fist. Delving deep into personal hauntologies, McClure's speakers are...

Boldly lyrical and fiercely honest, Mahogany L. Browne's Chrome Valley offers an intricate portrait of Black womanhood in America. "We praise their names / & the hands that write / Praise the mouth that speaks," she writes in tribute to those who came...

Autobiomythography of sifts through Nigerian stories and mythologies, both inherited and invented, to explore the self, family, and nationhood.In an attempt at decolonization, it is an exploration of what it means to be a subject--a person, yes, but also...

Black history, cultural expression, and the natural world fuse in Janice N. Harrington's Yard Show to investigate how Black Americans have shaped a sense of belonging and place within the Midwestern United States. As seen through the documentation of...

A stunning new collection of poetry from Shane McCrae, winner of the Whiting Writers' Award.Shane McCrae, one of the most powerful voices in contemporary poetry, returns with The Many Hundreds of the Scent, an urgent new collection that brims with lyric...

After exploring the arts and spoken word worlds of her native Chicago and the US East Coast, award-winning journalist, poet, and dreamer Clara Rose Thornton visited Germany for what was supposed to be three idyllic months of writing and rest. What...

A deft, musical debut poetry collection about the disabling effects of illness, rupture, and inheritance--informed both by Yoruba divinatory systems and violent Western medical understandings of the Black body. If I Gather Here and Shout summons Yoruba...

Gomer's Song is a re-rendering of the Bible story. In Gomer, a harlot who was the wife of the Old Testament prophet Hosea, Kwame Dawes finds the subject for a beautiful contemporary exploration on freedom and sacrifice. Kwame Dawes is an award-winning...

Hailed by Arnold Rampersad as "[Hughes'] most brilliant book of poems," Fine Clothes to the Jew is the stunning sophomore collection of poetry that--in conjunction with The Weary Blues--solidified Langston Hughes as a literary powerhouse.Originally...

"Breezes blowin' middlin' brisk, / Snowflakes thro' the air a-whisk, / Fallin' kind o' soft an' light, /Not enough to make things white, / But jest sorter siftin' down / So 's to cover up the brown /Of the dark world's rugged ways / 'N' make things look...

Part exploration of a key group of BlackCanadian poets, part literary, cultural, and musical history, Soundin' Canaandemonstrates how music in Black Canadian poetry is not solely aesthetic, but aform of social, ethical, and political expression. ...