National Poetry Month Reads
As far as you know : poems
Moritz, A. F. (Albert Frank), author.
2020
"As Far As You Know, acclaimed poet A. F. Moritz's twentieth collection of poems, begins with two sections entitled "Terrorism" and "Poetry." The book unfolds in six movements, yet it revolves around and agonizes over the struggle between these two catalyzing concepts, in all the forms they might take, eventually arguing they are the unavoidable conditions and quandary of human life. Written and organized chronologically around before and after the poet's serious illness and heart surgery in 2014, these gorgeously unguarded poems plumb and deepen the reader's understanding of Moritz's primary and ongoing obsessions: beauty, impermanence, history, social conscience and responsibility, and, always and most urgently, love. For all its necessary engagement with worry, sorrow, and fragility, As Far As You Know sings a final insistent chorus to what it loves: "You will live."-- Provided by publisher.
Burning sugar : poems
Blain, Cicely Belle, 1993- author.
2020
"The latest from Vivek Shraya's VS. Books: a poetic exploration of Black identity, history, and lived experience influenced by the constant search for liberation. In this incendiary debut collection, activist and poet Cicely Belle Blain intimately revisits familiar spaces in geography, in the arts, and in personal history to expose the legacy of colonization and its impact on Black bodies. They use poetry to illuminate their activist work: exposing racism, especially anti-Blackness, and helping people see the connections between history and systemic oppression that show up in every human interaction, space, and community. Their poems demonstrate how the world is both beautiful and cruel, a truth that inspires overwhelming anger and awe--all of which spills out onto the page to tell the story of a challenging, complex, nuanced, and joyful life. In Burning Sugar, verse and epistolary, racism and resilience, pain and precarity are flawlessly sewn together by the mighty hands of a Black, queer femme. This book is the second title to be published under the VS. Books imprint, a series curated and edited by writer-musician Vivek Shraya, featuring work by new and emerging Indigenous or Black writers, or writers of colour."-- Provided by publisher.
Field notes for the self
Lundy, Randy, 1967- author.
2020
"Following his Blackbird Song, Randy Lundy's fourth collection of poetry modulates the trauma of remembering with the greater spiritual affirmations offered by the natural world. Field Notes for the Self is a series of dark meditations: spiritual exercises in which the poem becomes a forensics of the soul. The poems converse with Patrick Lane, John Thompson, and Charles Wright, but their closest cousins may be Arvo Pàˆrt's tintinnabulations--overlapping structures in which notes or images are rung slowly and repeatedly like bells. The goal is freedom from illusion, freedom from memory, from "the same old stories" of Lundy's violent past; and freedom, too, from the unreachable memories of the violence done to his Indigenous ancestors, which, Lundy tells us, seem to haunt his cellular biology. Rooted in exquisitely modulated observations of the natural world, the singular achievement of these poems is mind itself, suspended before interior vision like a bit of crystal twisting in the light."-- Provided by publisher.
Home body
Kaur, Rupi, author, illustrator
2020
Rupi kaur constantly embraces growth, and in home body, she walks readers through a reflective and intimate journey visiting the past, the present and the potential of the self. home body is a collection of raw, honest conversations with oneself - reminding readers to fill up on love, acceptance, community, family, and embrace change. illustrated by the author, themes of nature and nurture, light and dark, rest here.
Hope is the thing with feathers : the complete poems of Emily Dickinson
Dickinson, Emily, 1830-1886.
2019
How to fly : (in ten thousand easy lessons) : poetry
Kingsolver, Barbara, author
2020
In this intimate collection, Barbara Kingsolver trains her eye on the everyday and the metaphysical in poems that are smartly crafted, emotionally rich, and luminous. In her second poetry collection, Kingsolver offers reflections on the practical, the spiritual, and the wild. Altogether, these are poems about transcendence: finding breath and lightness in life and the everyday acts of living.
I am still your Negro : an homage to James Baldwin
Mason-John, Valerie, author
2020
"Valerie Mason-John's poetry collection, I Am Still Your Negro, blends spoken word and hashtags with villanelles, sonnets, and haiku to traverse the African Diaspora experience through place, time, and circumstance. Blak Inglis street vernacular, the cadence of enslaved people in the Americas, patois and creole join the enduring spirit voice of Yaata, Supreme Being of the Kona people, to reveal narratives of liberation, entrapment, sexual assault, eating disorders, and rave culture. An emotive critique of colonization's bitter legacy, this collection will draw audiences of the spoken word genre and poetry readers who wish to broaden their knowledge about contemporary social justice issues."-- Provided by publisher.
Not one of these poems is about you
Harrison, Teva, author, artist
2020
From Teva Harrison, the award-winning author of In-Between Days, comes a moving and illuminating work of poetry and art about living with cancer.
The response of weeds : a misplacement of black poetry on the Prairies
Bickersteth, Bertrand, 1969- author.
2020
"Bertrand Bickersteth's debut poetry collection explores what it means to be black and Albertan through a variety of prisms: historical, biographical, and essentially, geographical. The Response of Weeds offers a much-needed window on often overlooked contributions to the province's character and provides personal perspectives on the question of black identity on the prairies. Through these rousing and evocative poems, Bickersteth uses language to call up the contours of the land itself, land that is at once mesmerizing as it is dismissively effacing. Such is black identity here on this paradoxical land, too."-- Provided by publisher.
Roguelike : poems
Henderson, Mathew, 1985-
2020
"Mathew Henderson's Roguelike, the much-anticipated follow-up to his acclaimed 2012 debut The Lease, melds the unique online vocabulary, culture, and logic of video games with family and addiction narratives, specifically the poet's relationship with his mother and her struggle with narcotics. The resulting poems are arresting and fresh, mining game mythology, fantasy, and family history, while exploring the rich connection between video gaming and notions of addiction, repetition, storytelling, and escapism. Though the poems are largely narrative, ultimately Roguelike is less about stories themselves than it is about the psychological and emotional forces that define how and why we make them -- how we're all moved to shape the disparate and seemingly unconnected events of our lives into something meaningful, to make sense of the past and the present through storytelling."-- Provided by publisher.
This wound is a world
Belcourt, Billy-Ray, author
2019
The new edition of a prize-winning memoir-in-poems, a meditation on life as a queer Indigenous man... Presented here with several additional poems, this prize-winning collection pursues fresh directions for queer and decolonial theory as it opens uncharted paths for Indigenous poetry in North America. It is theory that sings, poetry that marshals experience in the service of a larger critique of the coloniality of the present and the tyranny of sexual and racial norms.
What kind of woman : poems
Baer, Kate, author.
2020
A stunning and honest debut poetry collection about the beauty and hardships in being a mother, a wife, and a woman.
When you ask me where I'm going
Kaur, Jasmin, author
2020
The six sections of the book explore what it means to be a young woman living in a world that doesn't always hear her and tell the story of Kiran as she flees a history of trauma and raises her daughter, Sahaara, while living undocumented in North America. Delving into current cultural conversations including sexual assault, mental health, feminism, and immigration, this narrative of resilience, healing, empowerment, and love will galvanize readers to fight for what is right in their world.
Word problems : poems
Williams, Ian 1979-
2020
Poems that use the language of math problems to ask ethical questions.