Poetry Speaks

US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s iconic poem "Remember" invites young listeners to pause and reflect on the wonder of the world around them, and to remember the importance of their place in it.

Remember the sky you were born under,
Know each of the star's stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun's birth at dawn,
That is the strongest... Read more »

A remarkable poetry collection from Clint Smith, the #1 New York Times bestselling and National Book Critics Circle award-winning author of How the Word Is Passed.

Clint Smith’s vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world.... Read more »

Arielle Estoria is known for her moving and empowering words that encourage women and all people to be confident in who they are, compassionate about where they’ve been, and loving about who they are becoming. In this stunning collection of essays, poems, and meditations, Estoria tenderly reveals the places in her life where she has been broken... Read more »

Time Is a Mother

“I was stunned by Vuong’s gorgeous prose and raw revelations. Time is a Mother was an intense experience. The audiobook is less that two hours, but I have spent days thinking about Vuong’s words. I highly recommend this incredible poetry collection.”

Karen, Tattered Cover

Postcolonial Love Poem

“Pulitzer Prize-winning Postcolonial Love Poem will make you want Natalie Diaz to write a love poem about you. Here, she writes sensual lesbian poems and warm platonic ones, poems about water and basketball and things lost in translation. Her elegant poetry begs to be studied—add this stunner from a Mexican Mojave poet to your shelf, and eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

Mary, Raven Book Store

A Fortune For Your Disaster

“Hanif Abdurraquib’s powerful collection of poems explores the unending heartbreak of being black in America and how to find strength and self-actualization. Landscaped by graves, mirrors, and music these poems take the personal grief of being barked at by dogs and frames and re-frames those aggression into explorations on how our nation’s history and ceaseless failures cannot stamp our indelible humanity. The series of poems titled “How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This” are defiant manifestos that will be talked about for years to come.”

Luis, Avid Bookshop

If They Come for Us

“Raw, but not unpolished. Dripping with sadness and honey. Rage beyond anger, a lesson in history and violence. A comprehensible example of otherness in America for those who haven’t experienced it; for those who don’t know they’re perpetuating it. An honest portrayal of a life shaped by governments’ omissions, of the lies of the self and others, and of waking to the daylight, the promise held in sunshine, and in finding one’s own voice, own words, own way of telling one’s own story.”

BrocheAroe, River Dog Book Co.

A New York Times bestseller and National Book Award winner

Jacqueline Woodson, the acclaimed author of Another Brooklyn, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse. 
 
Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African... Read more »

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 original way.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF... Read more »

A stunning new volume from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States, informed by her tribal history and connection to the land.In the early 1800s, the Mvskoke people were forcibly removed from their original lands east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory, which is now part of Oklahoma. Two hundred years later, Joy Harjo... Read more »

Homie

“In their third collection, Danez Smith shakes to life the parts of people that have gone to sleep waiting for this time in the world to be over. Those emotions that raise up too much anger or grief — all of them are alive again and seen and spoken for with utmost care and a tremendously welcome sense of humor. Pick this book up and carry it with you everywhere. It can be like a video game heart for you, and who doesn’t need an extra heart?”

Luis Lopez, Moon Palace Books

One of NPR’s Best Books of 2020
One of Time’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2020

From the New York Times bestselling author of I Can’t Date Jesus, which Vogue called “a piece of personal and cultural storytelling that is as fun as it is illuminating,” comes a wry and insightful essay collection that explores the financial and emotional cost of chasing... Read more »

Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the... Read more »

This is about what grows through the wreckage. This is an anthem of survival and a look at what might come after. A view of what floats and what, ultimately, sustains.Build Yourself a Boat redefines the language of collective and individual trauma through lyric and memory. Read more »

The Chicago Race Riot of 1919, the most intense of the riots comprising the nation’s Red Summer, has shaped the last century but is not widely discussed. In 1919, award-winning poet Eve L. Ewing explores the story of this event—which lasted eight days and resulted in thirty-eight deaths and almost 500 injuries—through poems recounting the... Read more »

The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop is a call to create healthy, sustainable, and empowering classroom communities. Award-winning educator Felicia Rose Chavez exposes the invisible politics of power and privilege that have silenced writers of color for far too long. It's more urgent than ever that we consciously work against traditions of dominance... Read more »

A Finalist for the National Book Award

When Ada leaves home for her freshman year at a Historically Black College, it’s the first time she’s ever been so far from her family—and the first time that she’s been able to make her own choices and to seek her place in this new world. As she stumbles deeper into the world of dance and explores her... Read more »

From the prolific author of The Moon Within comes the heart-wrenchingly beautiful story in verse of a young Latinx girl who learns to hold on to hope and love even in the darkest of places: a family detention center for migrants and refugees.Nine-year-old Betita knows she is a crane. Papi has told her the story, even before her family fled... Read more »

Amanda Gorman’s powerful and historic poem “The Hill We Climb,” read at President Joe Biden’s inauguration

“Stunning.” —CNN 
“Dynamic.” —NPR
“Deeply rousing and uplifting.” —Vogue


On January 20, 2021, Amanda Gorman became the sixth and youngest poet to deliver a poetry reading at a presidential inauguration. Taking the stage after the 46th... Read more »

A novel-in-verse about a young girl coming-of-age and stepping out of the shadow of her former best friend. Perfect for readers of Elizabeth Acevedo and Nikki Grimes.

"Mahogany L. Browne's debut YA ia an absolute masterpiece. It will leave you breathless." -Elizabeth Acevedo, New York Times bestselling author of The Poet X 

She looks me hard in my... Read more »