Monday, December 17, 2018

The year in African American poetry, 2018


Continuing the practice of documenting annual news items and publications concerning African American poetry. Here's a partial list of developments that caught my attention.

• February: Mellon Foundation names Elizabeth Alexander as president.
• February: Patricia Smith wins Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.
• February: Donika Kelly wins the Kate Tufts Discover Award.
• March: Shane McCrae's In the Language of My Captor earns Anisfield Award.
• March: Tracy K. Smith named as incoming chair of Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton.
• April: Reginald Dwayne Betts and Tyehimba Jess earn Guggenheim Fellowships.
• April: Patricia Smith's Incendiary Art wins LA Times Book Prize for poetry.
• April: Rita Dove named poetry editor for The New York Times magazine.
• August: Poet Sonia Sanchez wins Wallace Stevens Award.
• August: Geffrey Davis won the 2018 James Laughlin Award for the forthcoming Night Angler.
• August: Malcolm Tariq wins the Cave Canem Poetry Prize.
• August: Safia Elhillo earns the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.
• September: Danez Smith wins Forward poetry prize.
• November: Justin Phillip Reed wins the National Book Award for Poetry for Indecency.

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Select volumes of poetry published in 2018:
• Tiana Clark's I Can't Talk about the Trees Without the Blood
• Mitchell L.H. Douglas's Dying in the Scarecrow’s Arms
• Jasmine Gibson's Don’t Let Them See Me Like This
• Alexis Pauline Gumbs's M Archive: After the End of the World
• Monica A. Hand's Divida
• Terrance Hayes's American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
• Justin Phillip Reed's Indecency
• Tracy K. Smith's Wade in the Water.
• Kevin Young's Brown

Related:
The year in African American poetry, 2017
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

1 comment:

Alec said...

Heard Safia Elhillo on Soundcloud today and really enjoyed the rest of her recorded poetry readings on Poets.org...amazing work!