Saturday, June 29, 2019

160+ volumes of poetry by black women, 2000 - 2019



Off the top, you know this is a partial, non-exhaustive list. Still, I wanted to catalog some of the volumes of poetry by black women I've encountered over the last several years.

[Related: 53 black women poets, 106 poems: Audio recordings]

2019
• DaMaris Hill's A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing
• Eve L. Ewing's 1919
• Morgan Parker's Magical Negro
• Lauren K. Alleyne’s Honeyfish

2018
• Tiana Clark's I Can't Talk about the Trees Without the Blood
• Jasmine Gibson's Don’t Let Them See Me Like This
• Alexis Pauline Gumbs's M Archive: After the End of the World
• Kwoya Fagin Maples’s Mend: Poems
• Monica A. Hand's Divida
• Tracy K. Smith's Wade in the Water
• Allison Joseph’s Confessions of a Barefaced Woman
• Allison Joseph’s Corporal Muse
• Dominique Christina’s Anarcha Speaks
• Natasha Trethewey’s Monument: Poems New and Selected
• Kateema Lee’s Musings of a Netflix Binge Watcher

2017
• Nikki Giovanni's A Good Cry: What We Learn From Tears and Laughter
• Eve L. Ewing's Electric Arches
• Airea D. Matthews's Simulacra
• Aja Monet's My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter
• Morgan Parker's There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé
• Evie Shockley's Semiautomatic
• Patricia Smith's Incendiary Art
• Allison Joseph’s Surviving Artistry
• Allison Joseph’s What Once You Loved
• Allison Joseph’s Taking Back Sad
• Mahogany L. Browne's Smudge
• Kamilah Aisha Moon's Starshine & Clay
• Esther Iverem's Olokun of the Galaxy

2016
• 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
• Donika Kelly's Bestiary
• Safiya Sinclair's Cannibal
• Allison Joseph’s The Purpose of Hands
• Allison Joseph’s Mercurial
• Allison Joseph’s Multitudes
• Allison Joseph’s Mortal Rewards
• Allison Joseph’s Double Identity
• Tiana Clark's Equilibrium
• Camille T. Dungy's Trophic Cascade
• Cheryl Clarke’s By My Precise Haircut
• Teri Cross Davis’s Haint
• Elizabeth Acevedo's Beastgirl & Other Origin Myths
• Kateema Lee’s Almost Invisible

2015
• Rachel Eliza Griffiths's Lighting the Shadow
• Celeste Doaks's Cornrows and Cornfields
• Allison Joseph’s Little Epiphanies
• Robin Coste Lewis's Voyage of the Sable Venus: and Other Poems
• Erica Hunt's Time Slips Right Before Your Eyes
• Maya Angelou's The Complete Poetry
• Vievee Francis's Forest Primeval: Poems
• Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’s The Glory Gets
• Mahogany L. Browne's Redbone

2014
• Marilyn Nelson's How I Discovered Poetry
• TJ Jarrett's Zion
• Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric
• Allison Joseph’s Trace Particles
• Bettina Judd's Patient: Poems
• Harmony Holiday's Go Find Your Father/A Famous Blues

2013
• Ai's The Collected Poems of Ai 
• LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs's TwERK 
• Yona Harvey's Hemming the Water
• Ruth Ellen Kocher's Domina Un/blued 
• Kamilah Aisha Moon's She Has a Name 
• Brenda Marie Osbey's History and Other Poems 
• TJ Jarrett's Ain't No Grave
• Nikki Giovanni's Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid
• Harryette Mullen's Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary
• Remica L. Bingham’s What We Ask of Flesh

2012
• C. M. Burroughs's The Vital System: Poems
• Lucille Clifton's The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010
• Monica Hand's me and Nina
• Tracie Morris's Rhyme Scheme
• Patricia Smith's Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah
• Natasha Trethewey's Thrall
• Vievee Francis's Horse in the Dark: Poems
• Angel Nafis's BlackGirl Mansion

2011
• Harmony Holiday's Negro League Baseball
• Rachel Eliza Griffiths's Mule & Pear
• Nikky Finney's Head Off & Split
• Evie Shockley's the new black
• Doris Davenport's Ascent: Poems 
• Tracy K. Smith's Life on Mars
• Aracelis Girmay's Kingdom Animalia
• Camille T. Dungy's Smith Blue

2010
• Ai's No Surrender: Poems.
• Elizabeth Alexander's Crave Radiance
• Camille T. Dungy's Suck on the Marrow
• Allison Joseph's My Father’s Kites
• Sonia Sanchez's Morning Haiku
• Alice Walker's Hard Times Require Furious Dancing

2009
• Elizabeth Alexander's Praise Song for the Day
• Tara Betts's Arc & Hue
• Jayne Cortez's Jayne. On the Imperial Highway
• DeLana R.A. Dameron's How God End Us
• Rita Dove's Sonata Mulattica
• Nikki Giovanni's Bicycles
• Allison Joseph's Voice: Poems
• Kysha Brown Robinson's Spherical Woman
• Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon's Open Interval
• Crystal Williams's Troubled Tongues
• Marilyn Nelson's Sweethearts of Rhythm: The Story Of The Greatest All-Girl Swing Band In The World

2008
• Patricia Smith's Blood Dazzler
• Lucille Clifton's Voices
• Cherryl Floyd-Miller's Exquisite Heats
• Marilyn Nelson's The Freedom Business

2007
• Patricia Spears Jones's Painkiller: Poems
• Elizabeth Alexander and Marilyn Nelson's Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies & Little Misses of Color
• Tracy K. Smith's Duende
• Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard
• Nikki Giovanni's Acolytes: Poems
• Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’s Red Clay Suite (So
• Aracelis Girmay's Teeth

2006
• Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard.
• Elizabeth Alexander's American Blue
• Camille T. Dungy's What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison
• Vievee Francis's Blue-Tail Fly
• Patricia Spears Jones's Femme du Monde
• Mullen, Harryette. Recyclopedia: Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, and Muse and Drudge
• Evie Shockley's a half-red sea 
• Patricia Smith's Teahouse of the Almighty

2005
• Elizabeth Alexander's American Sublime
• Ramona Hyman's In the Sanctuary of a South
• Marilyn Nelson's A Wreath for Emmett Till
• Marilyn Nelson's The Cachoeira Tales And Other Poems
• Mona Lisa Saloy's Red Beans and Ricely Yours
• Esther Iverem's Living in Babylon: Poems and Performances

2004
• Lucille Clifton's Mercy
• Rita Dove's American Smooth
• Allison Joseph's Worldly Pleasures
• Naomi Long Madgett's Connected Islands: New and Selected Poems
• Opal Moore's Lot’s Daughters
• Mendi Lewis Obadike's Armor and Flesh
• Thylias Moss's Slave Moth: A Narrative in Verse
• Marilyn Nelson's Fortune’s Bones: The Manumission Requiem

2003
• Ai's Dread: Poems.
• Kelly Norman Ellis's Tougaloo Blues
• Nikky Finney's The World is Round
• Ruth Ellen Kocher's One Girl Babylon
• Jessica Care Moore's The Alphabet Verses
• Angela Shannon's Singing the Bones Together
• Tracy K. Smith's The Body's Question 
• Nikki Giovanni's The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni
• Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’s Outlandish Blues

2002
• Natasha Trethewey's Bellocq's Ophelia
• Jayne Cortez's Jazz Fan Looks Back
• Allison Joseph's Imitation of Life
• Naomi Long Madgett's Octavia: Guthrie and Beyond
• Harryette Mullen's Blues Baby
• Harryette Mullen's Sleeping with the Dictionary
• Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon's Black Swan
• Nikki Giovanni's Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not Quite Poems

2001
• Elizabeth Alexander's Antebellum Dream Book
• Marilyn Nelson's Carver
• Dolores Kendrick’s Why the Woman in Singing on the Corner
• Sharan Strange's Ash

2000
• Lucille Clifton's Blessing the Boats
• Toi Derricote's Natural Birth
• Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’s The Gospel of Barbecue
• Natasha Trethewey's Domestic Work
• Allison Joseph’s Imitation of Life

Related:
Blog entries about black women poets
A checklist of book lists

5 comments:

Kim Roberts said...

A few additions!
2019:
Lauren K. Alleyne, Honeyfish
t'ai freedom ford, & more black

2018:
Cheryl Clarke, Targets
Kateema Lee, Musings of a Netflix Binge Watcher

2017:
Elizabeth Acevedo, Medusa Reads La Negra's Palm
Remica Bingham-Risher, Starlight & Error
Safia Elhillo, The January Children
t'ai freedom ford, how to get over
Mary Stone Hanley, Road Trip
Esther Iverem, Olokun of the Galaxy
Camisha Jones, Flare
Kateema Lee, Almost Invisible

2016:
Elizabeth Acevedo, Beastgirl and Other Origin Myths
Cheryl Clarke, By My Precise Haircut
Teri Cross Davis, Haint

2015:
Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Lighting the Shadow
Lisa Pegram, Cracked Calabash

2014:
Venus Thrash, The Fateful Apple

2013:
Remica L. Bingham, What We Ask of Flash

2011:
Paulette Beete, Voice Lessons
Linda Joy Burke, Moods, Minds and Multitudes
Melanie Henderson, Elegies for New York Avenue
Gloria Oden, Homage

2010:
Sonya Renee Taylor, A Little Truth on Your Shirt

2006
Esther Iverem, Living in Babylon

2005
Paulette Beete, Blues for a Pretty Girl
Donna Denize, Broken Like Job

2004
Gloria Oden, Appearances

2002
Dolores Kendrick, Why the Woman in Singing on the Corner

L.P. Jones said...

Lynne Thompson's "Start With a Small Guitar," "Beg No Pardon" and "Fretwork" which just won the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize!!

Aldon Nielsen said...

I hadn't known of that late-life Gloria Oden title -- just ordered a copy -- thanks -- For a whole expansion of these lists, see Letters to the Future, edited by Erica Hunt and Dawn Lundy Martin.

Colleen said...

Angela Jackson's "House Repairs" is brilliant and painful

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