12 New Poetry Collections Releasing This Spring
What better time is there to dive into a new book of poetry than springtime? The season is filled with changes and blooming all around and a good book of poems can be the perfect addition to those long days sitting outside, soaking in the sun.
Here are 12 new poetry collections coming out this spring that should be added to your TBR pile immediately:
The Hurting Kind by Ada Limón
Limón’s sixth, highly-anticipated collection of poetry releases May 10 from Milkweed Editions. It centers on interconnectedness “between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves,” per the publisher’s site. Limón’s other books include The Carrying, Sharks in the Rivers, and more.
Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow by Noor Hindi
Releasing May 31 from Haymarket Books, Hindi’s debut poetry collection focuses on politics, patriarchy, and identity. The book “is ultimately a provocation: on trauma, on art, and on what it takes to truly see the world for what it is/isn’t and change it for the better,” per the description on the publisher’s site.
Swallowed Light by Michael Wasson
Wasson’s debut poetry collection is coming May 10 from Copper Canyon Press. The publisher describes the book as “[beginning] at the opened clearing of myth, at the mouth of history.” Wasson is also the author of the chapbook This American Ghost.'
Against Heaven by Kemi Alabi
Winner of the Academy of American Poets First Book Award, Alabi’s collection releases April 5 from Graywolf Press. “Through tender love poems, righteous prayers, and vital provocations, we see the colonizers we carry within ourselves being laid to rest,” the publisher’s description of this promising debut reads. The collection was selected by Claudia Rankine.
So, Stranger by Topaz Winters
Winters’s third poetry collection comes out May 17 from Button Poetry. In it, “Winters questions the boundary between the things we inherit & those we owe,” as well as lineage and futures, per the publisher’s site. Winters is also the author of Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing and poems for the sound of the sky before thunder.
The Wet Hex by Sun Yung Shin
Making its way into the world on June 14 from Coffee House Press, this collection “layers an apocalyptic revision of nineteenth-century imagery of the sublime over the present, conjuring a reality at once beautiful and terrible,” per the publisher. Shin is also the author of poetry books Unbearable Splendor, Skirt Full of Black, and Rough, and Savage.
Mausoleum of Flowers by Daniel B. Summerhill
Releasing April 5 from CavanKerry Press, Summerhill’s second collection “melds the exploration of spirituality, rebellion, and Black tradition” with themes of loss and light, per the publisher’s site. His debut collection Divine, Divine, Divine came out last year.
Blessed Are the Peacemakers by Brionne Janae
Winner of the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, Janae’s poetry book comes out April 15. The collection’s poems “explore the ways the truth is often hidden behind layers of bleach and shame, and the ways we fail survivors by dismissing their stories and tolerating their abusers,” reads the description on the publisher's site. They are also the author of After Jubilee.
Useful Junk by Erika Meitner
Meitner’s eagerly awaited sixth poetry collection releases April 5 from BOA Editions. With themes of memory and desire, the poems in the collection “speak to us from parking lots, planes, dreamscapes, and the digital arena to affirm that we are made of every intimate moment we have ever had,” per BOA’s site. Meitner is also the author of Holy Moly Carry Me, Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls, Inventory at the All-Night Drugstore, and others.
Lessons on Being Tenderheaded by Janae Johnson
Another debut, this collection releases April 5 from Write Bloody Publishing. Johnson’s poems delve into “how we are taught to disguise pain through suppression of macro and micro traumas” and belonging, per Write Bloody’s site.
Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong
This long-awaited sophomore poetry collection comes out from Penguin Press April 5. Page by page, the “poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break,” per Penguin Random House. Vuong is also the author of the poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds and the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.
As She Appears by Shelley Wong
Winner of the Pamet River Prize, this debut collection releases from YesYes Books May 10. Throughout the book, Wong “foregrounds queer women of color in their being and becoming,” per the YesYes site. Wong is also the author of the chapbook Rare Birds.
