Poetry

Aaron Samuels, raised in Providence, Rhode Island by a Jewish mother and a Black father, is a Cave Canem Fellow and a nationally acclaimed performer. In this ground-breaking collection of poems, Samuels examines the beauty and contradictions of his own...

How to Survive the Apocalypse, the second collection from poet Jacqueline Allen Trimble, examines the many apocalypses that African Americans have weathered, advising that those who wish to avoid annihilation should "live by rage and joy and turpentine."...

Arguably the greatest African American poet of the century, Sterling Brown was instrumental in bringing the traditions of African American folk life to readers all over the world. This is the definitive collection of Brown's poems, and the only edition...

2000 marks the centenary of Lift Every Voice and Sing, James Weldon Johnson's most famous lyric, which is now embraced as the Negro National Anthem. In celebration, this Penguin original collects all the poems from Johnson's published works--Fifty Years...

The poetry of Nikki Giovanni has spurred social justice movements and inspired songs, turned hearts and informed generations about the reality of life--especially Black life--in America. One of the foremost African-American writers and activists of her...

Intimate poems that explore feminine shame and violence and imagine what liberation from these threats might look like, from the award-winning author of The January Children In Girls That Never Die, award-winning poet Safia Elhillo reinvents the epic to...

Poetry. African & African American Studies. Back in the day when KRS-One intoned--The Bridge is over!--he did not prefigure a poet from Queens of the fierce attitude and intellectual magnitude of Enzo Silon Surin. WHEN MY BODY WAS A CLINCHED FIST gives...

A poetry collection in nine sections that each take on an aspect of memory. The poems in t/here it is take multiple forms as each section reflects on variations of experience, engaging with the simultaneity of historic and present time while yearning...

Written after the death of his mother, Donte Collins's Autopsy establishes the poet as one of the most important voices in the next generation of American poetry. As the book unfolds, the reader journeys alongside the author through grief and healing...

A stunning poetic exploration of life's journey and its accompanying heartache, trauma, and struggle. On My Best Day is the ultimate self-love anthem, from the personal writings of popular poet Tiffany Nicole Pigée, for the healing of your mind, your...

Amirah Al Wassif's latest English-language collection of poetry explores how women must cope in a culture that suppresses everything in them, even their curiosity. Her words fearlessly display and challenge the impact that the repressive male attitude...

Odyssey in Progress presents through various styles of poetry the life experiences of Sandra Brown. Haiku #1 and My Odyssey serve as the starting points of Brown's poetic memoir. She becomes incarcerated for defending her life, but pieces such as Truth...