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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