Thursday, December 21, 2017

The year in African American poetry, 2017

Tyehimba Jess's Olio (2016) was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2017. 

Like in years past, I documented news items and publications concerning African American poetry. Here's a partial list of developments that caught my attention.

Select volumes of poetry published in 2017:
• Eve L. Ewing's Electric Arches
• Cortney Lamar Charleston's Telepathologies
• Airea D. Matthews's Simulacra
• Adrian Matejka's Map to the Stars
• Shane McCrae's In the Language of My Captor
• Aja Monet's My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter
• Morgan Parker's There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé
• Evie Shockley's Semiautomatic
• Danez Smith Don't Call Us Dead
• Patricia Smith's Incendiary Art
• Jerry W. Ward, Jr.'s Fractal Song
• Afaa Michael Weaver's Spirit Boxing

Edited Collections
• The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks Eds. Peter Kahn, Ravi Shankar,‎ Patricia Smith
• Bearden's Odyssey: Poets Respond to the Art of Romare Bearden Eds. Kwame Dawes and Matthew Shenoda

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• February: Vievee Francis is selected as the recipient of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.

• February: Phillip B. Williams is selected as recipient of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award.

• March: Ishion Hutchinson wins National Book Critics Circle award for poetry for House of Lords and Commons.

• March: Simone White and Phillip B. Williams awarded Whiting Writers Awards.

• March: Claudia Rankine wins the 2016 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry for Citizen.

• March: Nathaniel Mackey wins the Bobbitt Lifetime Achievement prize.

• April: Ishion Hutchinson, Gregory Pardlo, Claudia Rankine, and Afaa M. Weaver receive Guggenheim fellowships.

• April 10: Tyehimba Jess's Olio is selected for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

• April: Patricia Spears Jones receives the Jackson Poetry Prize.

• April: Robin Coste Lewis named Poet Laureate of Los Angeles.

• June: Tracy K. Smith named U.S. Poet Laureate.

• August: Ed Roberson is awarded an Academy of American Poets Fellowship.

• September: Cortney Lamar Charleston receives Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship.

• November: Kevin Young becomes editor for poetry for The New Yorker.

• November: Poet Kevin Young published Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News.

• November: Shane McCrae and Rickey Laurentiis receive Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry.

• December: Adrian Matejka named Poet Laureate of Indiana.

Related:
• The year in African American poetry, 2016
• The year in African American poetry, 2015
• The year in African American poetry, 2014
• The year in African American poetry, 2013
• The year in African American poetry, 2012
• The year in African American poetry, 2011

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