From empowerment to identity to understanding the past, these poetry and prose collections will keep you reading and inspired all month long. Enjoy these new poetry releases this June.
The She Book by Tanya Markul
The She Book is a collection of 114 poems and prose written for any woman that holds space for emotional pain, rebirth and letting go. Tanya Markul, who seeks to empower with her words, is on a mission to help women heal from pain and find power from within. This poetry collection is about bringing light into the darkness and finding safety and empowerment in vulnerability.
1919 by Eve L. Ewing
In 1919, award-winning poet Eve L. Ewing explores the story of The Chicago Race Riot of 1919, one of the most intense riots during the “Red Summer” of violence that swept across the nation that year, which remains widely unknown. Through poems recounting the stories of everyday people trying to survive and thrive in the city, Ewing uses speculative and Afrofuturist lenses to recast history and illuminates the thin line between the past and the present.
A Sand Book by Ariana Reines
In her long-awaited follow-up to Mercury, Reines has written her most ambitious, visceral and satisfying work to date. A poetry collection in nine parts, A Sand Book migrates from wildfires to hurricanes, Tweety Bird to the president, lust to aridity, desertification to prophecy, and mother to daughter. Reines’s poems explore the relationship between catastrophe and cultural transmission while addressing events such as Hurricane Sandy, the murder of Sandra Bland, and the massacre at Sandy Hook.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Although this is a novel, we couldn’t make this list without talking about an Ocean Vuong release. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born—a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam—and serves as a pathway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. With poetic prose throughout, this novel explores finding joy in survival.
