17 New Poetry Collections Releasing This Spring
Is there any better way to usher in the season of rebirth and growth than with new poetry books? With so many amazing new collections hitting the shelves weekly, it can be difficult to track what’s new out in the world of poetry. If you’re looking for some forthcoming poetry collections to kick off the new season, you’ve come to the right place!
Check out our list of 17 new poetry books you should add to your list this spring.
Trace Evidence by Charif Shanahan
Shanahan’s upcoming poetry collection releases March 21 from Tin House. The book centers “on the intricacies of mixed-race identity, queer desire, time, mortality, and the legacies of anti-Blackness in the US and abroad,” per the publisher’s site. Shanahan is also the author of Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing.
Above Ground by Clint Smith
This highly-anticipated second collection from Smith comes out March 28 from Little, Brown. The book “traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world,” per the publisher, with themes covering the many dualities of life. Smith is also the author of Counting Descent, in addition to the nonfiction book How the Word Is Passed.
Standing in the Forest of Being Alive by Katie Farris
Releasing April 4 from Alice James Books, Farris’s upcoming debut poetry book “reckon[s] with erotic love even as the narrator is diagnosed and treated for breast cancer at the age of thirty-six, during a time of pandemic and political upheaval,” per the author’s website. Farris has also written several other collections, including the chapbooks A Net to Catch My Body in its Weaving and Thirteen Intimacies.
Staying Right Here by Usman Hameedi
Another debut, this collection is forthcoming April 4 from Button Poetry. In it, Hameedi “invites readers to bear witness to vignettes of joy and hardship as he navigates finding his place in America,” per the publisher. Hameedi has competed and coached for multiple slams and appeared in several online features.
Saltwater Demands a Psalm by Kweku Abimbola
Another debut book, Abimbola’s collection releases April 4 from Graywolf Press. In it, per the publisher, “an intricately layered poetics of time and body based in Black possibility, ancestry, and joy” emerges through themes of ritual, symbolism, and tradition. The book won the Academy of American Poets First Book Award last year.
No Sweet Without Brine by Cynthia Manick
Manick’s book releases April 4 from Amistad. The collection “is a playlist of everyday life, introverted thoughts, familial bonds, and social commentary,” per the publisher, with poems that focus on both memories and current realities. Manick is also the author of Blue Hallelujahs.
Date of Birth by Shawn R. Jones
Releasing April 11 from Persea Books, Jones’s forthcoming collection centers around both suffering and strength. The winner of the 2022 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry, not only records tragedies in life while “also a testament to the strength and resilience of the figures it portrays,” per the publisher. Jones is also the author of the chapbooks Womb Rain and A Hole to Breathe.
Lying In by Elizabeth Metzger
Metzger’s second collection releases April 11 from Milkweed Editions. The book “[traces] high-risk pregnancy and new motherhood amid grief,” per the publisher, centering around unknown futures, as well as past selves. Metzger is also the author of The Spirit Papers and the chapbook Bed.
Freedom House by KB Brookins
This debut full-length releases April 11 from Deep Vellum. Brookins’s collection “explores transness, politics of the body, gentrification, sexual violence, climate change, masculinity, and afrofuturism while chronicling their transition and walking readers through different ‘rooms’,” per the publisher. Brookins is also the author of the chapbook How To Identify Yourself with a Wound and their memoir Pretty is forthcoming next year.
The Shared World by Vievee Francis
Francis’s book comes out April 17 from Northwestern University Press/TriQuarterly Books. The collection “delves into inherited memories and restrictions between families, lovers, and strangers and the perception and inconvenient truth of Black woman as mother—with or without child,” per the publisher. Francis is the author of several other collections, including Horse in the Dark and Forest Primeval.
Buffalo Girl by Jessica Q. Stark
This eagerly-awaited second full-length collection releases April 18 from BOA Editions. Through hybrid works juxtaposed with collaged photos, Stark “explores her mother’s fraught immigration to the United States from Vietnam at the end of war through the lens of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale,” per the publisher. Stark is also the author of Savage Pageant and several chapbooks.
a “Working Life” by Eileen Myles
Releasing April 18 from Grove Atlantic, this collection “unerringly captures the measure of life,” per the publisher, through the everyday goings-on and life’s many contradictions. Myles is the author of numerous books, including Pathetic Literature, I Must Be Living Twice, and Chelsea Girls.
40 Weeks by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
Dasbach’s third poetry collection makes its way into the world April 25 from YesYes Books. The poems throughout the book “embrace the bare and grotesque nature of pregnancy and childbirth as they consider how to mother a neurodivergent child while pregnant with another, rejecting a culture that views the body with shame,” per the publisher. Dasbach is also the author of The Many Names for Mother and Don’t Touch the Bones.
Fever of Unknown Origin by Campbell McGrath
Forthcoming May 9 from Knopf, this collection contains “warnings, love letters, and praise songs for all that manages to weather the perennial pressures of time: frog ponds, stadium rubble, and the endless cycle of seasons,” per the publisher, and unknown futures using the lens of the past. McGrath is the author of many poetry collections, including Nouns & Verbs, American Noise, and Road Atlas.
Yours, Creature by Jessica Cuello
Cuello’s upcoming book releases May 15 from Jackleg Press. The book “is composed of epistolary poems in the voice of Mary Shelley,” per its description, and explores the monstrous, as well as “the pleasure of creation.” Cuello is also the author of Liar and Pricking, in addition to several chapbooks.
Things I Didn’t Do with This Body by Amanda Gunn
Gunn’s debut collection comes out May 23 from Copper Canyon Press. Throughout the book, told in six parts, “Gunn pens poems that migrate from South to North, from elegy to prayer, from borrowed shame to self-acceptance,” per the publisher, through themes of family, grief, and so much more. Her work can be found in publications such as Poetry and Narrative Magazine, among others.
Bread and Circus by Airea D. Matthews
Matthews’s book releases May 30 from Scribner. In autobiographical poems and prose that are juxtaposed with redacted texts, the collection centers around “the economics of class and its failures for those rendered invisible by it,” per the publisher, and “demonstrates that self-interest fails when people become commodities themselves, and shows how the most vulnerable—including the author and her family—have been impacted by that failure.” Matthews is also the author of Simulacra.
Which books will you be reading this spring?
