Explore this e-book selection during National Poetry Month this April, featuring works by award-winning poets delving into the intricacies of the human condition and the wonders of the natural world.
Born and raised near the swamplands of South Louisiana, author Cody Smith won the 2018 Mississippi Review Prize for his poem “Self Portrait as a Liminal Space”. Smith’s 2019 collection, Gulf: Poems (Volume 1) evokes strikingly vivid memories of the author’s early childhood home, family, and culture amid the fragile beauty of Louisiana’s coastlines.
Read this impassioned celebration of life in rural Louisiana here.
The Tradition by Jericho Brown
Born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana, Jericho Brown is a poet, writer, and educator who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2020 for his third book of poetry, The Tradition. In this transformative collection on the complexities of human experience and Black identity, Brown combines several older poetic forms such as the ghazal, the sonnet, and the blues to create his own unique musical structure called the duplex. Brown is a graduate of Dillard University (BA), and the University of New Orleans (MFA), and earned a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston. Read this illuminating work here.
Wonderful Wasteland and Other Natural Disasters: Poems by Elidio La Torre Lagares
Elidio La Torre Lagares is a Puerto Rican writer and educator who won the Julia de Burgos National Poetry Award in 2008 for his whimsical study of flight, Ensaya del Vuelo (Flight Rehearsal). La Torre Lagares’s 2019 collection Wonderful Wasteland and Other Natural Disasters: Poems follows the author’s firsthand experiences witnessing the devasting impacts of Hurricane María on Puerto Rico. As La Torre Lagares processes the tragic loss of his family, friends, and homeland, his writings offer hope in the wake of disaster. Read this stirring look into a poet’s determination to console their community in the face of great adversity here.
From Turtle Island to Gaza by David A. Groulx
David Groulx is an award-winning author with aboriginal roots, Anishnabe and French Canadian. His 2019 poetry collection From Turtle Island to Gaza examines the common ground between the Indigenous peoples of settler Canada with the people of Gaza in Palestine. Read this poignant reflection on the past and present shared experiences of these two people here.
Together in a Sudden Strangeness: America's Poets Respond to the Pandemic – Edited by Alice Quinn
Alice Quinn, former director of the Poetry Society of America, edited this ambitious poetry collection to offer artistic solace as the devastating impacts of the coronavirus spread across the globe. Featuring over 100 works by renowned poets including Ada Limón, Tommy Orange, and Jeffrey Yang, this stirring anthology captures the collective grief and hope of America during quarantine. Read here.
By Josh Windham
4/1/2024
