Bøger udgivet af Button Poetry

Darius Simpson's debut collection Never Catch Me centers on Black boyhood in the midwest and familial disintegration over time. Simpson pulls back the curtain, exposing the violence enacted against and upon, Black bodies, and yet, still, each poem is saturated in revolution and hope. Never Catch Me is the anthem necessary to organize a community that is committed to a better right now-one that can only be achieved with an intensity and action that goes far beyond the page.

"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"--

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?

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.

2022 Button Poetry Prize Runner-Up How to Maintain Eye Contact takes readers through a journey of uncertainty and what we make of it. Set in three sections, Robert Wood Lynn explores interior uncertainty, interpersonal uncertainty and uncertainty at a larger scale. These narrative poems, influenced by storytelling traditions, find themselves at the nexus of the intimate and the humorous, as well as the absurd and the tragic. These poems examine isolation and grief in their many forms--through heartbreak or the death of loved ones, or show us the world looking back at itself after it ends.

Exploring the relationship between blackness, shame, and what it is to live a life tied to the church, this collection is rich with historical context and a deeply engaging personal narrative.

2023 The Black Caucus of the American Library Association - Poetry Winner 2022 Heartland Bookseller Awards Finalist A Peculiar People creates an entire microcosm within these poems. Steven Willis crafts a cast of characters, showcasing their struggles, identities, & underlying emotions. Willis champions the art of storytelling: weaving pop-culture and screenwriting elements to allow the reader to view this social commentary with a fresh lens. This collection examines the author's life experience; the pain of being Black and facing systemic racism.

"Urbanshee is Siaara Freeman's retelling of fairy tales and mythological stories through a modern and urban lens. This collection discusses the weight of being Black in America, Freeman's relationships to lovers and family, and how the physical place you grew up can become part of your identity. Urbanshee expertly combines humor, fantasy, and raw emotion to create this astonishing reinvention of classic fables. Freeman's poems are ventrously unique and are sure to enchant anyone who reads them."--Publisher marketing.

Afterwards is a book about the things that come after trauma. It encompasses the different kinds of grief-- primarily the loss of a friend to suicide, but also the loss of an important relationship, and dealing with some loss related to family. There are frank discussions of mental illness and the spectrum of emotions that come with moving forward.

A hybrid text that deals most urgently in the articulation of growth and grief. After the loss of his mother, Omar Holmon re-learns how to live by immersing himself in popular culture, becoming well-versed in using the many modes of pop culture to spell out his emotions. This book is made up of both poems and essays, drenched in both sadness and unmistakable humour. Teeming with references that are touchable, no matter what you do or don''t know, this book feels warm and inviting.

Birthright is a book that balances the weight of place. The pride and shame and worth of homeland. Palestine, a homeland under siege and under scrutiny from a world that doesn''t occupy its borders. It is a book of immense nuance, pulling together all corners of the author s pride in home, but also a desire to understand the violent cycles of the American machinery of war.

2021 Midwest Book Awards - Poetry Debut Gold Medal Winner 2020 Forewords Reviews INDIES Awards - Poetry Gold Medal Winner "Prophetic in bleak times" --DR. CORNEL WESTThe Willies, Adam Falkner's first full-length poetry collection, offers a sharp and vulnerable portrait of the journey into queerhood in America. In a voice that Dr. Cornel West heralds as "prophetic in bleak times," Falkner departs from a more familiar coming out narrative to center the stories of dueling selves. Masquerading white boy. Child of an addict. Closeted varsity athlete. Drifting seamlessly between the scholarly and conversational, Falkner's poems showcase a versatility of language and a courageous hunger, unafraid of depicting the costumes we use to hide legacies of toxic masculinity. Through snapshots both tragic and humorous, merciless and humane, Falkner offers powerful new ways of understanding the intersectional linkage that binds queer shame to cultural appropriation. At its core, The Willies asks us to consider who we will become if we do not grapple with what scares us most. Advance praise for The Willies Adam Falkner has heard what hums at the marrow of men who deceive themselves in order to survive America. -- SAEED JONES This is truth that changes the air it reaches. This is poetry that, damn it, you can't shake. -- PATRICIA SMITH In these urgent and sometimes mysterious poems, Falkner traces questions of identity, family, love and the self. His language is angular and surprising, his content intimate and profound. -- ANDREW SOLOMONAdam Falkner is a poet with a heart of gold and a spine of steel. We need his prophetic voice in these bleak times. --DR. CORNEL WEST I am thankful for the incisive mind and eye of Adam Falkner. In the poems, the work of balancing several selves at once is done gently, deftly, and with the brilliance of someone curious about how limitless they can become. ― HANIF ABDURRAQIB

From poetry slam champion Porsha O, a debut collection exploring black womanhood.