April is National Poetry Month, a good time to consider our new poetry books.
New Poetry for Spring 2023
The Wild Hunt Divinations: A Grimoire / Trevor Ketner
“Sexy, queer, and contemporary, Ketner’s thrilling anagrammatic sonnets reinvent and permute Shakespeare while exploring the possibilities inherent in the combinatorial game of language.”
—Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, author of Travesty Generator
Icelight / Ranjit Hoskote
“At the heart of this utterly beautiful, resonant, and moving collection is a profound sense of South Asia’s role in world history, and the title poem’s image of an Ice Age artist. The beginning of human attention to animal, nature and the earth, but also the beginning of what human does to earth, ‘maimed and gloried’ through art.”
—Ruth Padel, author of Beethoven Variations
In Springtime / Sarah Blake
“At this dark, late hour of our planet, there is grace in the way Sarah Blake looks through the lens of different species for a better gauge of our own human lives. In Springtime is where Blake also expands our perception of wounds, ‘Injury lends a certain steadiness. Like your whole life was spent uneasy in your body.’ This new book is a brilliant, bona fide page-turner.”
—CAConrad, author of AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration
Brother Poem / Will Harris
“After the triumph of RENDANG, Will Harris takes us in this captivating new collection to a place altogether stranger, where the self is polished to a blur and memory a series of forking paths: ‘Each time / you forget & remember the experience / becomes truer.’ With uncommon brilliance and linguistic originality, this is a book that unpicks the myths we weave around ourselves as individuals or as nations. Harris is a poet I turn to for the solace of an idea perfectly caught. These are poems to dwell in; they challenge and restore.”
—Sarah Howe, author of Loop of Jade
suddenly we / Evie Shockley
“suddenly we sings the nuanced realities of Black life as homage, elegy, and polyphonic celebration striking at the core of remembrance. A deep and unfettered thinking, Shockley gives us shouts of joy amidst the drudge of a world unraveled.”
—Matthew Shenoda, author of Tahrir Suite
AWP 2023
Our celebration of poetry is not limited to the month of April. This year, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference was held at Seattle, where we celebrated our poets! Here are some photos from our events.
