Looking to Read More Poetry During Poetry Month? Check these out.
If you didn’t know, April is National Poetry Month, a time to celebrate the importance of poetry and poems in our culture. In these collections, poets explore a vast number of topics that range from nature, identity, culture, and, ultimately, humanity and our connection with one another. These collections include work from a range of well-celebrated poets, like Mary Oliver, Ross Gay, and Joy Harjo, and emerging new poets. This list is in no way all-inclusive but, whether you’re looking to include poetry in your everyday or if you’d just like to celebrate National Poetry Month, this is be a good place for readers to start.
A breathtaking poetry collection on hope, heart, and heritage from the most prominent and promising Black poets and writers of our time, edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author Kwame Alexander.
In this comprehensive and vibrant poetry anthology, bestselling author and poet Kwame Alexander curates a collection of contemporary anthems at turns tender and piercing and deeply inspiring throughout. Featuring work from well-loved poets such as Rita Dove, Jericho Brown, Warsan Shire, Ross Gay, Tracy K. Smith, Terrance Hayes, Morgan Parker, and Nikki Giovanni, This Is the Honey is a rich and abundant offering of language from the poets giving voice to generations of resilient joy, “each incantation,” as Mahogany L. Browne puts it in her titular poem, is “a jubilee of a people dreaming wildly.”This essential collection, in the tradition of Dudley Randall’s The Black Poets and E. Ethelbert Miller’s In Search of Color Everywhere, contains poems exploring joy, love, origin, race, resistance, and praise. Jacqueline A.Trimble likens “Black woman joy” to indigo, tassels, foxes, and peacock plumes. Tyree Daye, Nate Marshall, and Elizabeth Acevedo reflect on the meaning of “home” through food, from Cuban rice and beans to fried chicken gizzards. Clint Smith and Cameron Awkward-Rich enfold us in their intimate musings on love and devotion. From a “jewel in the hand” (Patricia Spears Jones) to “butter melting in small pools” (Elizabeth Alexander), This Is the Honey drips with poignant and delightful imagery, music, and raised fists.
Fresh, memorable, and deeply moving, this definitive collection a must-have for any lover of language and a gift for our time.
Mattie J.T. Stepanek’s poems takes us through his struggles with a rare form of muscular dystrophy and the death of his three siblings from the same disease. Despite the challenges, his honesty around topics like life, pain, and loneliness conveys a message of love and peace.
Emily Hoang is a writer and editor, who is obsessed with haunted houses, ghosts, and dreams. More info can be found on her website.