BY JOANNA C. VALENTE
Here’s a small peak into what 2020 has in store for us, thanks to these wonderful authors and small/indie presses (and of course, stay tuned for more lists for upcoming books). Check out this list for five other books.
Kelly Grace Thomas - Boat Burned (YesYes Books)
It’s hard not to be excited by a book blurbed by Paige Lewis, sam sax, Jennifer Givhan, and Tiana Clark - all poets I adore. Sax wrote, “In this remarkable inaugural collection, Kelly Grace Thomas reminds us water is where we are from, water is what we are made of, and water is where we’ll return.” That’s enough to convince me.
Read an excerpt here:
“They say tell me
a story and you never know
the right way to spill.
This is the one where you
and your father tied
yourselves to dark. Sailed
all night to make it
to Florida. Holding only a memory
of sleep. This was the biggest
goodbye.”
Nelson Simón (translated by Lawrence Schimel) - Itinerario del olvido / Itinerary of Forgetting (Skull + Wind Press)
I’m so excited about this collection (and this press!). As the press wrote on the site, the book is “ a sixteen-part series from Nelson Simón’s award-winning collection A la sombra de los muchachos en flor, which won both the Julián del Casal Poetry Prize from La Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba and later the Premio de la Crítica Literaria. Itinerary of Forgetting is Simón’s first publication in English and has been translated by Lawrence Schimel. Simón’s work tackles both homosexuality & politics (an act both bold and brave for an openly gay writer in Cuba in the late 90s) while at the same time situating itself within the lyric traditions of both Cuba and the larger Spanish-speaking world.”
Kerrin McCadden - Keep This to Yourself (Button Poetry)
McCadden’s collection deals with family and grief, which is a world all of us know well. Her poetry cuts through the body like a knife slicing an apple that isn’t an apple. You can experience this for yourself, and read a poem here:
“Sometimes I pray. Want to know what else? That first day?
I stayed home and left my students with a substitute
who got mad at them when they cried. I also did that. “
Arhm Choi Wild - Cut to Bloom (Write Bloody)
I’ve been a reader of Wild’s work for some time now, and it’s always been powerful, full of wisdom, and unafraid. So, naturally, I’m excited for this monumental collection to come out. The book centers around identity, survival, trauma, and what it means to be American.
Read a poem of Wild’s here:
“It is for the cost of loving this country,
of finally feeling like I fit in,
like I have found the people
to whom I belong.
Gay people don’t exist in Korea,
and I am holding back a tongue
that could break this mirage
because seeing men not afraid to hold hands
and fix each other’s ties is too beautiful—
beautiful like a kiss
in the naked soft of morning,
beautiful like a mother
welcoming her daughter home.”
Abayomi Animashaun (editor) - Far Villages: Welcome Essays for New and Beginner Poets (Black Lawrence Press)
Give more more books about writing. They’re so essential for everyone at every stage in their writing life, and are so often underrepresented and/or talked about. For beginners, we all need a guide. But for writers of experience, they can get us out of own heads.
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Sexting Ghosts, Xenos, No(body), #Survivor: A Photo Series (forthcoming), and A Love Story (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021). They are the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault and the illustrator of Dead Tongue (Yes Poetry, 2020). They received their MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College, and Joanna is the founder of Yes Poetry and the senior managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine.