Poetry

Don't Call Us Dead

Poems

By: Danez Smith
Narrated by: Danez Smith
Length: 1 hour 14 minutes

Finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry

Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection

Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place... Read more

1919

By: Eve L. Ewing
Narrated by: Eve L. Ewing
Length: 1 hour 5 minutes

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

As Soft as Fire: Collected Poems

By: Upile Chisala
Narrated by: Upile Chisala
Length: 2 hours 16 minutes

As Soft as Fire collects Upile Chisala’s three acclaimed poetry books -- soft magic, nectar, and a fire like you -- in audiobook form, complete with the author’s reflections on her inspiration and process. 
soft magic, Chisala’s debut collection, explores themes of survival and healing; nectar expands on the topics of growth and renewal despite... Read more

a fire like you

By: Upile Chisala
Narrated by: Upile Chisala
Length: 47 minutes

A fierce and lyrical collection of poetry celebrating the moments of triumph and beauty in our lives, as well as the moments of despair—recasting them as opportunities for growth.
 
In this never-before-published collection, poet Upile Chisala grapples with themes of love, loss, and desire. Throughout this third book, she explores her identity as... Read more

Heart Talk: Reflections

52 Weeks of Self-Love, Self-Care, and Self-Discovery

By: Cleo Wade
Narrated by: Cleo Wade
Length: 1 hour 20 minutes

Based on Cleo Wade’s bestselling book, Heart Talk, these pages string together gentle prompts, words of encouragement, and inquiries into the body, mind, and soul.

Inspired by her conversations with the thousands of fans she has met on her nationwide sold-out tours, Heart Talk: The Journal is a space to share your own truths alongside hers.

As... Read more

The Tradition

By: Jericho Brown
Narrated by: Jericho Brown
Length: 1 hour 3 minutes

Winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award

Jericho Brown's daring book The Tradition details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown's poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human:... Read more

The New Negro

An Interpretation

By: Alain Locke
Narrated by: York Whitaker, Robin Eller, Charon Normand-Widmer, Ron Butler, J. D. Jackson, Sean Crisden, Cary Hite, Bill Andrew Quinn, Leon Nixon, Earl Sewell, Rhett Samuel Price, Lynch Travis, Dez Walker, Patryce Williams & Kevin R. Free
Length: 13 hours 38 minutes

This anthology edited by the American writer, philosopher, and patron of the arts Alain Locke brings together some of the most influential pieces of African American works from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Featuring the voices of Zora Neale Thurston, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Langston Hughes, Locke included commentary on the... Read more

Homie

Poems

By: Danez Smith
Narrated by: Danez Smith
Length: 1 hour 32 minutes

“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... Read more

A Fortune For Your Disaster

Poems

By: Hanif Abdurraqib
Narrated by: Hanif Abdurraqib
Length: 1 hour 36 minutes

“Pain. Peace. Power. A startlingly cohesive deep dive into grief and heartbreak and possibility that will sit with you through the hardest days and act at once as a mirror and window. This is one to sit with again and again, and revel in its interconnectedness. Beautifully narrated by the author. Read more