Our 2024 partners, sponsors, and advertisers present some of their titles to help celebrate National Poetry Month! Join us in reading poetry this April and beyond.
2024 National Poetry Month Reading List
Bad Mexican, Bad American by Jose Hernandez Diaz
Acre Books, March 2024
Rooted in more than one culture, this debut showcases the minimalist, working-class aesthetic of a “disadvantaged Brown kid,” which takes wing in prose poems that recall and celebrate that form’s ties to Surrealism.
36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem by Nam Le
Alfred A. Knopf, March 2024
An explosive and devastating debut collection, as self-indicting as it is scathing, from the acclaimed author of The Boat. “Capable of shaking Western self-regard to its foundations.” —J. M. Coetzee, Nobel laureate 2003
Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere by Anastacia Renee
Amistad, March 2024
In this bold hybrid collection of poetry, flash fiction, and Afrofuturism sci-fi, the award-winning interdisciplinary writer Anastacia Renee explores what happens when god is a black woman.
The Span of a Small Forever by April Gibson
Amistad, April 2024
With echoes of Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals and Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor, an extraordinary debut collection from a prize-winning poet that chronicles a Black woman’s journey through disability, the byzantine healthcare system, life-giving, taking, and sacrifice.
Someone Birthed Them Broken by Ama Asantewa Diaka
Amistad, April 2024
A visceral and candid portrait of today’s Ghanaian youth, told in interconnected short stories by acclaimed spoken-word artist and author of the poetry collection Woman, Eat Me Whole Ama Asantewa Diaka.
Before You Know It by S.K. Williams
Andrews McMeel Publishing, April 2024
Sometimes, beneath the weight of the world, we find ourselves drowning. Let this collection of poetry breathe life back into your lungs and remind you of everything that you’ve already overcome.
Eclipse by Wilder Poetry
Andrews McMeel Publishing, March 2024
Eclipse illustrates a magical journey of love between the sun and moon. Experience a cosmic
love story like no other, told through a collection of stunning poetry and enchanting imagery.
LVOE. Volume II by Atticus
Andrews McMeel Publishing, April 2024
Three-time New York Times bestselling author Atticus invites readers to take a deeper look behind the mask as he continues his powerful journey inward in search of love, peace, and acceptance.
The Music Was Just Getting Good by Alicia Cook
Andrews McMeel Publishing, January 2024
Some good things must come to an end for new things to begin. Poet Alicia Cook explores this grievous emotion in her trilogy’s latest and final mixtape collection, The Music Was Just Getting Good.
What I Should’ve Texted by Pierre Alex Jeanty
Andrews McMeel Publishing, March 2024
This collection from Pierre Alex Jeanty is a beautiful expression of the unspoken things that needed to be said and must leave our lips as we attempt to close chapters we were forced to abandon.
The Brush by Eliana Hernández-Pachón
Archipelago Books, March 2024
Told from the voices of two farmers, and a tangled grove of vines and orchids, The Brush is a response to a massacre in the village of El Salado, Colombia. An extraordinary expression of resistance.
A Fate Worse Than Death by Nisha Patel
Arsenal Pulp Press, April 2024
A Fate Worse than Death is a stunning poetic investigation of the worthiness of disabled life as told through the author's evaluation of her own medical records over the course of a decade.
Paperback, $18.95; e-Book, $9.99
Seraphim by Angelique Zobitz
CavanKerry Press, April 2024
This isn’t a book about the pain of being a Black womxn. This is about Black womxn and joy. About celebration. If you’ve ever wondered how Black womxn can burn with such vibrance and exuberance, Seraphim is the answer.
Mountain Amnesia by Gale Marie Thompson
Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University, December 2023
Mountain Amnesia rebuilds a new world—and self—in the wake of destruction and loss. Influenced by the landscape of rural Appalachia, these poems depict a nature relentlessly working on its own disappearance for survival.
My Body Is Paper: Stories and Poems by Gil Cuadros
City Lights Books, June 2024
A recently discovered treasure from Gil Cuadros, My Body Is Paper delves into the complexities of sex, family, and the betrayals of the body.
“One of the most important writers I’ve ever read.” —Justin Torres
Good Want by Domenica Martinello
Coach House Books, May 2024
What if poetry and prayer were the same: intimate and inconclusive, hopeful and useless, a private communion that hooks you to the thrashing, imperfect world?
Ember Days by Mary Gilliland
Codhill, March 2024
Woolf’s pen runs dry, Tesla holes up, Lincoln emerges in yet another bardo, and the rest of us tunnel through Wednesday’s jammed boulevards, Friday’s cash worthless, Saturday’s prodigal feet: “a radiant testimony—and a triumph—of an unerring ear.”—Ishion Hutchinson
The Silk Dragon II: Translations of Chinese Poetry by Arthur Sze
Copper Canyon Press, April 2024
In The Silk Dragon II, National Book Award–winning poet Arthur Sze presents a sophisticated vision of the vitality, diversity, and power of the Chinese poetic tradition.
All the Time You Want by Keith Taylor
Dzanc Books, January 2024
Keith Taylor, acclaimed poet of the Upper Midwest and the author of eighteen celebrated collections, delivers a stunning medley of his most lasting work: poems of Michigan, of nature, and of a lifelong love.
The Moon That Turns You Back by Hala Alyan
Ecco, March 2024
From the author of The Arsonists’ City and The Twenty-Ninth Year, a new collection of poetry that traces the fragmentation of memory, archive, and family—past, present, future—in the face of displacement and war.
Paperback, $17.99; e-Book, $11.99; Audiobook, $27.99
The Sorrow Apartments by Andrea Cohen
Four Way Books, March 2024
In The Sorrow Apartments, Andrea Cohen’s eighth collection, her signature gifts are front and center, along with sly humor, relentless economy, and the hairpin curves of gut-punch wisdom.
The Blue Mimes by Sara Daniele Rivera
Graywolf Press, April 2024
Winner of the Academy of American Poets First Book Award, selected by Eduardo C. Corral.
Raised by Wolves: Fifty Poets on Fifty Poems
Graywolf Press, January 2024
An innovative poetry anthology in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Graywolf Press.
The Letters of Emily Dickinson edited by Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell
Harvard University Press, April 2024
The definitive edition of the poet’s correspondence, expanded and revised for the first time in over sixty years. It includes all 1,304 of Dickinson’s extant letters and more than two hundred “letter-poems” sent without accompanying prose.
A Map Of My Want by Faylita Hicks
Haymarket Books, July 2024
A Map of My Want follows a nonbinary femme as they explore the sensual intersection of the personal and the political, a crossroads to which their sexual liberation brought them after their escape from a religious cult.
American Inmate by Justin Rovillos Monson
Haymarket Books, March 2024
Braiding personal narrative with contemporary rap lyrics and institutional language, Monson deepens the nuances and dimensions of and within Asian American poetics, prison poetics, and hip-hop poetics with his deft and experimental writing style.
O Body by Dan ‘Sully’ Sullivan
Haymarket Books, February 2024
O Body considers the male body—its momentum and privilege when moving through the world, but also its softness and vulnerability. Sullivan challenges wider social systems that uphold patriarchal notions of masculinity, exploring a new register of compassion, of self-love.
Robert Frost: Sixteen Poems to Learn by Heart by Jay Parini
Library of America, March 2024
In this keepsake edition, acclaimed poet and biographer Jay Parini presents sixteen of Robert Frost’s greatest works to memorize, offering insight into what each poem can tell us about one of our most beloved and enduring poets.
For Today by Carolyn Hembree
LSU Press, January 2024
Set in the Gulf South, For Today explores motherhood and grief through “poetry so sharp and bare it aims at nothing but the heart.” —Jericho Brown
You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World edited by Ada Limón
Milkweed Editions, April 2024
Edited by Ada Limón, the twenty-fourth poet laureate of the United States, a singular collection of fifty poems reflecting on our relationship to the natural world by our most celebrated writers.
Holy Winter by Maria Stepanova
New Directions Press, May 2024
In this deeply moving book-length poem, Stepanova—"Russia's greatest living poet" (Poetry) and the acclaimed author of In Memory of Memory—speaks of winter and war, of banishment and exile, and of social isolation and abandonment.
Hatch: Poems by Jenny Irish
Northwestern University Press, March 2024
In an apocalyptic elegy, Hatch traces the consciousness of an artificial womb that must confront the role she has played in the continuation of the dying of the human species.
Retribution Forthcoming: Poems by Katie Berta
Ohio University Press, April 2024
Using irony, humor, and associative logic, the speaker of these poems engages in a critique of capitalism and the ways women’s bodies are monitored, exploited, and expected to conform under that system.
Exploding Head by Cynthia Marie Hoffman
Persea Books, February 2024
This unsettling, image-rich memoir-in-prose-poems chronicles a lifelong journey with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which began in childhood and continues through the present day, challenging the poet’s relationship to motherhood, religion, and the larger world.
A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us by Carla Sofia Ferreira
River River Books, January 2024
Carla Sofia Ferreira’s A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us sings the traditions of the ode and the elegy, the prayer and the fado, ferrying its immigrant music between Portugal and Newark, New Jersey.
Dear Memphis by Rachel Edelman
River River Books, January 2024
The poems in Rachel Edelman’s Dear Memphis are a direct address to the city where the poet grew up, exploring questions of legacy, displacement, and belonging for a Jewish family living in the American South.
Reader, I by Corey Van Landingham
Sarabande Books, April 2024
Drawing its title from Jane Eyre, Reader, I spans the first years of a marriage, both courting and eschewing nuptial myths and negotiating “between an alleged Victorian decorum and an undeniable contemporary lyricism that dazzles.” —David Baker
Solio by Samira Negrouche
translated from the French by Nancy Naomi Carlson
Seagull Books, May 2024
Samira Negrouche’s poetry explores life’s perpetual motion, intertwining voices and histories in fluid landscapes. The language dances, defying definition, as the I becomes a prophetic force, offering hope amid the swirling contradictions of self and memory.
Red Studio by Murray Silverstein
Sixteen Rivers Press, April 2024
In a transformation as striking as it is persuasive, Matisse’s famed painting The Red Studio (L’Atelier rouge) becomes the red studio of the heart in poet Murray Silverstein’s superb third collection. There’s room in this studio for loss, doubt, and humor, but above all, there’s room for love.
Graffitied Heart: Poems in Conversation and a Conversation by Ellen Bass & Kendra DeColo
Slapering Hol, February 2024
Women’s bodies bleed, make love, make children. Graffitied Heart, by Ellen Bass and Kendra DeColo includes sensuous poems in conversation—plus a conversation—about actions of the flesh that mark the heart in no-holds-barred lines.
Softly Undercover by Hanae Jonas
The Ohio State University Press, February 2024
The winner of the Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize, Softly Undercover is an elliptical, lyrical debut that explores the pleasures and hazards of ritual, devotion, divination, and illusion, examining what it means to believe.
Stranger by Emily Hunt
The Song Cave, March 2023
Stranger, Emily Hunt's long-awaited follow-up to her acclaimed debut collection of poems, intimately chronicles the effects of love, labor, and grief on the life and sensibility of an artist.
Galáxias by Haroldo de Campos
translated by Odile Cisneros
Ugly Duckling Presse, May 2024
Galáxias is Brazilian poet Haroldo de Campos' chief poetic accomplishment. Translated by Odile Cisneros, this series of 50 “galactic cantos” incorporates literary allusion, citation, and phrases in a dozen languages, making Galáxias a formidable experiment in polyglot poetry.
An Abundance of Caution by George Witte
Unbound Edition Press, May 2023
“Incantatory…an era-encapsulating collection of stylish, deftly composed poems.”–-Kirkus Reviews
The poems in An Abundance of Caution seek grace, compassion, and clarity in a time marked by environmental crisis, global pandemic, and personal loss.
Origins of the Syma Species by Tares Oburumu
University of Nebraska Press, March 2024
Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize, Tares Oburumu’s collection is a brief history of Syma, the neglected oil-producing region of Nigeria he came from, mixing music, religion, and political critique to evoke pasts and futures.
No Charity in the Wilderness: Poems by Shaun T. Griffin
University of Nevada Press, April 2024
Poet Shaun T. Griffin accompanies the reader on a long journey into the new American West. This collection offers a prayer of reconciliation.
The Selected Shepherd by Reginald Shepherd, selected and with an introduction by Jericho Brown
University of Pittsburgh Press, April 2024
A new retrospective on the work of an important and sometimes controversial Black, gay poet. Jericho Brown’s introduction provides additional context and insight on this groundbreaking figure in American poetry.
Cheryl’s Destinies by Stephen Sexton
Wake Forest University Press, February 2024
Radicals liberate a zoo, teenagers flirt in a bowling alley, and W. B. Yeats discovers The Smashing Pumpkins. Cheryl tells our fortune, revealing how we exist in the past, present, and future at once.
If All the World and Love Were Young by Stephen Sexton
Wake Forest University Press, February 2024
An extended elegy following the loss of his mother, Stephen Sexton’s remarkable debut charts the familiar levels of the video game Super Mario World, whose flowered landscapes bleed into our world—and ours, strange with loss, bleed into it.
Aguas/Waters by Miguel Avero
translated from the Spanish by Jona Colson
Washington Writers’ Publishing House, May 2024
Aguas/Waters is the first collection of poems by Uruguayan poet Miguel Avero available to English-speaking readers. Each poem is matched with its English translation and showcases this prolific poet and his fierce style.
Irregular Heartbeats at the Park West by Russell Brakefield
Wayne State University Press, January 2024
Bold yet heartfelt poems that traverse family, friendship, grief, Americana, and the writer’s life. Drawing on a depth of emotion, wit, and reverence for nature, this striking collection captures the beautiful and often poignant complexities of the human experience.
Diver Beneath the Street by Petra Kuppers
Wayne State University Press, February 2024
A decaying psychogeography unfurls the landscapes of the 1967–69 “Michigan Murders,” the 2019 Detroit serial killer, and the COVID-19 lockdown in this visceral poetry collection from author, performance artist, and disability culture activist Petra Kuppers.
Room Swept Home by Remica Bingham-Risher
Wesleyan University Press, February 2024
Intimate and sweeping poetry that examines race and lineage, marrying meticulous archival research with Womanist scholarship and lyrical precision.