15 New Poetry Collections Releasing This Winter

There’s nothing better than grabbing a cozy blanket and curling up with a good book of poetry when temperatures begin to drop. If you’re looking for some new poetry to read as winter approaches, you’ve come to the right place!

Check out our roundup of 15 new poetry collections coming out this winter that you should add to your ever-growing TBR list

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Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco by K. Iver 

Winner of the 2022 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry, this poetry collection is due out January 10 from Milkweed Editions. The book “is an aching tribute to the power and precarity of queer love,” per the publisher’s website. Iver’s poems can be found in The Adroit Journal, Poetry Northwest, Columbia Journal, and more.

Judas Goat by Gabrielle Bates

A debut poetry collection, Bates’s forthcoming book releases January 24 from Tin House. Throughout the collection, the poems “wrestle with betrayal and forced obedience, violence and young womanhood, and the ‘forbidden felt language’ of sexual and sacred love,” per the publisher. Her poems can be read in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, amongst others. 

Promises of Gold by José Olivarez

Releasing February 7 from Henry Holt and Co., this collection focuses on “how every kind of love—self, brotherly, romantic, familial, cultural—is birthed, shaped, and complicated by the invisible forces of gender, capitalism, religion, migration, and so on,” per the publisher. Additionally, the book features a Spanish translation. Olivarez is also the author of Citizen Illegal.

Chrome Valley by Mahogany L. Browne

Browne’s newest poetry collection comes out February 7 from Liveright. Throughout the book, “Browne captures a quintessential girlhood through the pleasures and pangs of young love: the thrill of skating hip to hip at the roller rink, the heat of holding hands in the dark, and, sometimes, the sting of a palm across the cheek,” per the publisher. She is also the author of several other collections, including I Remember Death By Its Proximity to Those I Love, Kissing Caskets, and more.

Composition by Junious Ward

This full-length debut is forthcoming from Button Poetry February 7. In it, Ward “showcases to his readers an innovative approach as he unflinchingly explores the way language, generational trauma, loss, and resilience shape us into who we are, the stories we carry, and what we will inevitably pass on,” per the publisher. Ward is also the author of the microchap Sing Me A Lesser Wound.

Who Will Cradle Your Head by Jared Beloff

Another debut, this collection releases February 10 from ELJ Editions. The book “explores the sorrow and anxieties of living and parenting in a world on fire” through a variety of poem styles and themes, ranging from the beauty of nature to disaster and the apocalypse. Beloff also edited The Daily Drunk’s Marvelous Verses and his poems can be found in Rust + Moth, The Westchester Review, Night Heron Barks, and more.

I’m Always So Serious by Karisma Price

This debut collection comes out February 14 from Sarabande Books. Throughout the book, the poems “braid personal and public histories into a cultural reckoning of past and present,” per the publisher, with themes centered around Blackness, loss, and love. Her work can be found in Four Way Review, Poetry, Tinderbox, and more. 

Unshuttered by Patricia Smith

Smith’s latest collection releases February 15 from Northwestern University Press/TriQuarterly Books. In it, Smith “presents a portrait of Black America in the nineteenth century,” per the publisher, through haunting poems and antique photographs. Smith is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Incendiary Art, Blood Dazzler, and Teahouse of the Almighty.

Unusually Grand Ideas by James Davis May

Forthcoming February 22 from LSU Press, May’s collection “is a poignant account of clinical depression and the complications it introduces to marriage and fatherhood,” per the publisher, and its title is taken from a side effect of antidepressants. Its themes range from mental illness to humor and hope. He is also the author of Unquiet Things.

Every Living Day by Adam Gianforcaro

Releasing February 2023 from Thirty West Publishing, this collection “sketches a portrait of human existence in a world that is dying in slow-motion.” per the publisher. Gianforcaro’s poems can be found in Poet Lore, RHINO, Okay Donkey, and more. He is also the author of Morning Time in the Household, Looking Out.

Feast by Ina Cariño

Cariño’s debut collection releases March 7 from Alice James Books. Per an online description, the 2022 Whiting Award in Poetry-winning book “explores the intricacies of intergenerational nourishment beyond trauma, as well as the bonds and community formed when those in diaspora feed each other, both literally and metaphorically.” Their poetry can be found in American Poetry Review, Guernica, Waxwing, and more.

suddenly we by Evie Shockley

Shockley’s new book releases March 7 from Wesleyan University Press. Throughout the collection, she “mobilizes visual art, sound, and multilayered language to chart routes towards openings for the collective dreaming of a more capacious ‘we,’" per the publisher. Shockley is also the author of the new black and a half-red sea.

Tanya by Brenda Shaughnessy

In this collection, releasing March 7 from Knopf, Shaughnessy “weaves a tapestry of literary heritage and intimate reflection as she pays tribute to women artists and mentors, and circles the ongoing mysteries of friendship, love, art, and loss,” per the publisher. She is also the author of The Octopus Museum, Our Andromeda, and several other books.

Sex Depression Animals by Mag Gabbert

Winner of the 2021 The Journal Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize, this full-length debut is forthcoming from Mad Creek Books March 13. In this collection, “Gabbert casts new light on the traumas of her adolescence while charting new paths toward linguistic and bodily autonomy as a young adult,” per her website. Gabbert is also the author of the chapbook Minml Poems.

Bianca by Eugenia Leigh

Leigh’s second poetry collection comes out March 15 from Four Way Books. Her poems, including ones that will appear in the upcoming book, can be found in The Atlantic, Poetry Northwest, the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series, and more. She is also the author of Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows.

Which poetry collections are you most looking forward to this winter?