Ain't Never Not Been Black foregrounds Black pleasure Black pain and Black love in unflinchingly Black ways.Engaging with themes of masculinity, racism, love, and joy, Johnson is at once critical and creative. His spoken word performance transfers effortlessly to the page,...

From a 2021 Whiting Award and Guggenheim Fellow recipient, a “rhapsodic, rigorous poetry collection, which pays homage to everyday Black experience in the U.S.” (The New Yorker)Gregory Pardlo described Joshua Bennett's first collection of poetry, The Sobbing School, as an "arresting...

The selected poems from over fifty years by the great poet and biographer and friend of Miles Davis.Quincy Troupe writes poetry in great waves. The words are just notes. It's the music you make with them that matters. He's not...

In her astounding third collection, Nikki Wallschlaeger turns to water―the natural element of grief―to trace history’s interconnected movements through family, memory, and day-to-day survival. Waterbaby is a book about Blackness, language, and motherhood in America; about the ancestral joys and sharp pains...

From New York Times bestselling authors r.h. Sin and Robert M. Drake with bestselling poet Samantha King Holmes comes an ode for all women.This is the time to look into the mirror and see everything you’ve been fighting for. Yourself, a peace...

I am the Rage is not just a poetry book. It is a call-to-action. This evocative collection of thirty poems puts readers in the position of feeling, reflecting, and empathizing with what it means to be Black in America today. Dr....

A National Book Critics Circle Poetry Award Winner! From the breakout author of There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé comes a profound and deceptively funny exploration of Black American womanhood."Morgan Parker's latest collection is a riveting testimony to everyday blackness . ....

Winner of the NAACP Image Award and finalist for the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize“A powerful work of lyric art.” ―New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice In fierce, agile poems, Felon tells the story of the effects of incarceration―canvassing a wide range...

“When an author’s unmitigated brilliance shows up on every page, it’s tempting to skip a description and just say, Read this! Such is the case with this breathlessly powerful, deceptively breezy book of poetry.” ―Booklist, Starred Review In his much-anticipated...

Winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book AwardBe Holding is a love song to legendary basketball player Julius Erving—known as Dr. J—who dominated courts in the 1970s and ‘80s as a small forward for the Philadelphia ‘76ers. But this book-length poem is...

Sharp, lyrical poems celebrating the Black vernacular—its influence on pop culture, its necessity for familial survival, its rite in storytelling and in creating the safety found only within its intimacy“Terrific . . . illuminates life in this country in a strikingly...

For those on a journey to find self-love and acceptance, the words on these pages are dedicated to helping you see the beauty staring back in the mirror, finding the strength to conquer your heartbreak, gaining the confidence to bury...

A definitive selection of Audre Lorde’s "intelligent, fierce, powerful, sensual, provocative, indelible" (Roxane Gay) prose and poetry, for a new generation of readers. Self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet" Audre Lorde is an unforgettable voice in twentieth-century literature, and one...

The beauty and spirit of Maya Angelou’s words live on in this complete collection of poetry, including her inaugural poem “On the Pulse of Morning”Throughout her illustrious career in letters, Maya Angelou gifted, healed, and inspired the world with her words. Now the...

Named One of the Most-Anticipated Books of 2021 by:O, The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, The Millions, Refinery29, Publishers Lunch, BuzzFeed, The Rumpus, BookPage, Harper's Bazaar, Ms., Goodreads, and more“An elegantly layered, beautifully rendered tour de force that is not to be missed.” —Roxane Gay, author of Hunger“Libertie is...

An extraordinary collection of endurance and transformation by the award-winning author of BestiaryThe Renunciations is a book of resilience, survival, and the journey to radically shift one’s sense of self in the face of trauma. Moving between a childhood marked by love...

A collection of poetry by presidential inaugural poet Amanda GormanIncluding "The Hill We Climb," the stirring poem read at the inauguration of the 46th President of the United States, Joe Biden, this collection of the same name reveals an energizing...

A book of loss, looking back, and what binds us to life, by a towering poetic talent, called "one of the poetry stars of his generation" (Los Angeles Times)."We sleep long, / if not sound," Kevin Young writes early on...

The debut poetry collection from Grammy-nominated recording artist and slam poet Tarriona "Tank" Ball about infatuation, love, and heartbreak.The real-life story of a relationship in the author's past told in verse and short prose pieces. Relatable and honest, with Tank's...

A Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by Oprah Magazine • Time •  Vogue • Vulture • Essence • Elle • Cosmopolitan • Real Simple • Marie Claire • Refinery 29 •  Shondaland • Pop Sugar • Bustle • Reader's Digest “Nothing short of sublime, and the territory [Mans'] explores...couldn’t be more necessary.”—VogueFrom spoken word poet Jasmine Mans comes an unforgettable poetry collection about race, feminism, and...

Featured on NPR's Morning Edition A Poetry Book of the Year at The Guardian, The Sunday Times, and Poetry School Winner of the Ted Hughes Award, Rathbones Folio Prize, and Somerset Maugham Award; shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize  In the wake of...

"...This volume of verse displays the undeniable legacy June Jordan left on both our literature and culture. Collected here are blazing examples of poetry as activism, stanzas that speak truth to power and speak out against violence against women and...

A resonant new collection on love and persistence from the author of The Big Smoke, a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer PrizeThe poems in Adrian Matejka's newest and fifth collection, Somebody Else Sold the World, meditate on the...

A piercing, unflinching new volume offers necessary music for our tumultuous present, from “perhaps the best public poet we have” (Boston Globe). In her first volume of new poems in twelve years, Rita Dove investigates the vacillating moral compass guiding...

"Khalisa Rae’s Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat is like a newborn scream that’s been held in for eons. Sharp, strong, unapologetic, beautiful, and angry, the writing in this collection is a celebration of language and rhythm, and the words on the...

Winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets"Layered, complex, and infinitely compelling, Chet’la Sebree’s Field Study is a daring exploration of the self and our interactions with others―a meditation on desire, race, loss and survival." --Natasha Trethewey,...

New and selected poems from the Pulitzer Prize–winning poetThese songs run along dirt roads& highways, crisscross lonely seas& scale mountains, traverse skies& underworlds of neon honkytonk,Wherever blues dare to travel.Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth brings together selected poems from the past...

A representative collection of the life work of the much-honored poet and a founder of the Black Arts movement, spanning the 4 decades of her literary career.Gathering highlights from all of Sonia Sanchez’s poetry, this compilation is sure to inspire...

Born in a Second Language investigates how Born in a Second Language investigates how translation shapes and alters both language and identity as speakers travel through space and time. In this book, languages are a means of conjuring an existence,...