The year in African American poetry, 2021

Here’s a partial list of publications and news items related to African American poets and poetry that caught my attention this past year. 

• April: Francine J. Harris wins the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Poetry Award.

• April: Tracie Morris receives Guggenheim fellowship.

• April: Joshua Bennett, Ladan Osman, and Xandria Phillips win Whiting Awards. 

• May: Carl Phillips wins Jackson Poetry Prize.

• September: Courtney Faye Taylor wins 2021 Cave Canem Poetry Prize.

• September: Toi Derricotte wins Wallace Stevens Award.  

• September: Camille T. Dungy receives the Academy of American Poets Fellowship.

• September: Honorée Fanonne Jeffers wins the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.

• September: James Cagney wins the James Laughlin Award.

• September: Patricia Smith wins the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

• September: Reginald Dwayne Betts receives MacArthur Fellowship.

• September: Hanif Abdurraqib receives MacArthur Fellowship.

• September: Bryan Byrdlong receives Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships.

• October: Sonia Sanchez wins Gish Prize.

Chapbooks

• Little Girl Blue by Sequoia Maner

• Breathe by Angel Dye

Volumes of poetry

• Tenderness by Derrick Austin

• Master Suffering by CM Burroughs   

• Playlist for the Apocalypse by Rita Dove

• Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman

• SHO by Douglas Kearney

• Punks: New & Selected Poems by John Keene

• Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth: Selected Poems, 2001-2021 by Yusef Komunyakaa

• Somebody Else Sold the World by Adrian Matejka

• Collected Poems by Sonia Sanchez

• Mutiny by Phillip B. Williams

Related: 

 • Year in African American poetry entries