The year in African American poetry, 2016

Over the past year, I documented news items and publications concerning African American poetry. Here's a partial list of developments that I noted.

Select volumes of poetry published in 2016:

Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib's The Crown Ain't Worth Much
Joshua Bennett's The Sobbing School
Tara Betts's Break the Habit
Rita Dove's Collected Poems: 1974–2004
francine j. harris's Play Dead
Aracelis Girmay's The Black Maria
Hoke Glover's Inheritance
Ishion Hutchinson’s House of Lords and Commons
Tyehimba Jess's Olio
Allison Joseph's Mercurial, Mortal Rewards, Multitudes, Double Identity, The Purpose of Hands
Donika Kelly's Bestiary
Jamaal May's The Big Book of Exit Strategies
Safiya Sinclair's Cannibal
Clint Smith's Counting Descent
Phillip B. Williams's Thief in the Interior
Kevin Young's Blue Laws: Selected and Uncollected Poems, 1995-2015

Select collections in 2016:

Resisting Arrest: Poems to Stretch the Sky edited by Tony Medina
Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin (2016) edited by Philip Cushway and Michael Warr. 

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• February: Yolanda Wisher named Philadelphia Poet Laureate.

• March: Ross Gay wins Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.

• March: Ross Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (2015) wins the National Book Critics Circle award for poetry.

• March: Safiya Sinclair and LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs win Whiting Awards.

• April: Jericho Brown and Ed Roberson win Guggenheim Fellowships in poetry.

• April: Will Alexander wins the Jackson Poetry Prize.

• April: Sonia Sanchez is recipient of the Shelley Memorial Award.

• May: Ed Roberson awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

• May: Elizabeth Alexander elected to Pulitzer Prize Board.

• May: Claudia Rankine named the Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University.

• August: Kevin Young named as new director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

• September: Angel Nafis and Alison C. Rollins win Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships.

• November: Tyehimba Jess awarded a Lannan Foundation Literary Award.

• December: Joshua Bennett, Ruth Ellen Kocher, Danez Smith, and Patricia Smith win NEA Fellowships.


Related
• A visual recap of poetry blog entries in 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