Bøger i Button Poetry serien

One part mixtape, one part disorientation guide, and one part career retrospective, Kyle "Guante" Tran Myhre's debut looks you directly in the eye and doesn't let you flinch. Ranging from justice to love, community action to personal reflection, A Love Song, A Death Rattle, A Battle Cry is a dedication to craft. Clocking in before the rest of us are even awake, the book wastes no time. It does the work and beckons you to follow. A compilation of poems, lyrics and essays from the UN presenter, MC, and two-time National Poetry Slam champion, this book is a love song tucked into a grenade, a necessary call that demands a response.

"Butcher is a book about love & loss--about being unapologetic and transparent in grief. Natasha finds an unexpected solace in the kitchen after losing her best friend and brother, Marcus. Here, using the cuts of the cow as a metaphor, Miller explores addiction, family & tragedy. Butcher takes the body of a cow and cleaves it into 5 parts: envisioning the cuts as relationship with family members and social forces. Her Mother the rib, her Brother the brisket, her queerness as the tongue and cheek... Butcher is raw and tender. It's a book that tells the story of a woman who redefined success after losing the most valuable thing to her."--Amazon.com

2014 Button Poetry Prize Winner "These harrowing poems make montage, make mirrors, make elegiac biopic, make 'a dope ass trailer with a hundred black children / smiling into the camera & the last shot is the wide mouth of a pistol.' That's no spoiler alert, but rather, Smith's way-saying & laying it beautifully bare. A way of desensitizing the reader from his own defenses each time this long, black movie repeats."-Marcus Wicker "Danez Smith's BLACK MOVIE is a cinematic tour-de-force that lets poetry vie with film for the honor of which medium can most effectively articulate the experience of Black America."-Rain Taxi

Still Can't Do My Daughter's Hair is the latest book by author William Evans, founder of Black Nerd Problems. Evans is a long-standing voice in the performance poetry scene, who has performed at venues across the country and been featured on numerous final stages, including the National Poetry Slam and Individual World Poetry Slam. Evans's commanding, confident style shines through in these poems, which explore masculinity, fatherhood, and family, and what it means to make a home as a black man in contemporary America.

This debut collection plunges deep into the dissection of popular culture, exposing and how the brightness and horrors of it can be mirrors into the daily lived experiences of women in America.

"Rachel Wiley, an author who holds many intersecting identities, has written [this book of poetry] as a love letter to her living body. When confronted with fatphobia, racism, misogyny, and shame, each poem chooses self-love, despite society's expectations of conformity. More than just a book about one single identity, [this book] makes intersectionality dimensional"--Publisher marketing.

"Words can only help you if you speak them." -Crown Noble, Bianca PhippsLatinx, queer, poet Bianca Phipps dissects intimate family relationships in hopes of understanding conflict as a means of overcoming. Phipps' debut explores an alternate timeline version of her own childhood and by moving back and forth between those timelines she highlights her own generational inheritance while inviting us to discover our own. A College Spoken Word Phenom, Bianca is no stranger to plucking the heartstrings of readers and listeners. In Crown Noble she translates that charisma and flair for language to help her readers discover - even in the depths of hardship - the joy of family, of language, and of reclaiming your own story. --- Praise for Crown Noble "Bianca brings her heartbreak to life by continuing to build from it. What a joy that we get to hold what Bianca has grown." - Melissa Lozada-Oliva, author of Peluda "[Crown Noble] is a stunning meditation on familial bonds, inheritance, and what we owe to where we come from." - Kevin Kantor, author of Please Come Off-Book

2021 Button Poetry Short Form Poetry Contest Winner What I Learned from the Trees delves into the intricate relationship between humans and nature, and how these often overlooked, everyday interactions affect us as individuals, families, and communities. With a backbone rooted in primordial imagery and allegory, and a focus on how the growing disconnect with our own wants, needs, and fears creates deeper divides in our relationships, this collection is notably relevant to today's society and the struggles we face with the ever-expanding detachment between humans and the natural world. Aren't all living creatures seeking a notable existence? A deep sense of belonging? Of relevance? Of purpose? Of love? How often do we yearn for these wants, yet fight the vulnerability it takes to reach them? Why do we so clearly seek each other, yet refuse to reach out our hands?

"Rings on every finger. Hood and educated AF. You've met her. Wearing all her feelings and responding with a side-eye or a tongue-pop. You've seen her. At the grocery store. In restaurants. On the subway. At the bus stop. In a car you pulled up next to blaring whatever matches her mood. Hair in some natural or protective style for the Gods. Ebony Stewart. An around the way girl. One part human, all parts womxn. You know these poems because they be familiar. They be your grandmama, mama, auntie, and sis stories. Welcome to Home. Girl. Hood."--Back cover.

"A sci-fi-flavored exploration of the role that art and artists play in resisting authoritarianism. Featuring new poems, theater elements, and visual art by Casper Pham, the book follows two wandering poets as they make their way from village to village, across a prison colony moon full of exiled rebels, robots, and storytellers. Part post-apocalyptic road journal, part alternate universe ode to Hip Hop, and part 'Letters to a Young Poet'-style toolkit for emerging poets and aspiring movement-builders, it's also a one-of-a-kind practitioners' take on poetry, power, and possibility"--