10 New-to-Me Poets I Discovered Thanks to The Sealey Challenge

Ashley M. Jones

I work Jones’s latest collection, Reparations Now! for the Sealey Challenge, and past I instantly added each of her different books (Magic City Gospel, Dark // Thing) to my TBR due to the fact that WOW. Her poesy is playful and inventive, a dizzying blend of caller and classical forms. She writes with unthinkable extent and openness, penetration and anger, precision and delight — astir Blackness, womanhood, American history, violence, popular culture. She’s besides the Poet Laureate of Alabama! Of people she is. I can’t hold to work immoderate she publishes next.

Carl Phillips

Look, I don’t cognize however I didn’t cognize astir Carl Phillips until recently. All I tin accidental is that, thankfully, I’m present now. He’s published implicit 12 books of poesy successful his agelong (and ongoing!) career, and has won galore awards. I work and loved Double Shadow, and I presently person 2 of his newer collections, Wild Is the Wind and Then the War checked retired from the library. He poems are often delightfully formal, and helium blends philosophical ideas with striking imagery and details astir the earthy and quality world.

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Tishani Doshi

Tishani Doshi is an Indian poet, writer, and dancer of Welsh and Gujarati decent. In summation to galore books of poetry, she’s written respective novels, 2 works of nonfiction, and a retelling of the Mabinogion myth. Her enactment is far-ranging, exploring themes of home, migration, belonging, language, grief, nature, history. I wanted to underline conscionable astir each enactment successful A God astatine the Door, which is afloat of long, luscious poems that are adjacent parts solemnisation and elegy. “We stitch our days and nights, 1 to the other, / and it’s similar embroidering a galaxy, but adjacent galaxies / recede from 1 another.” Swoon.

John Murillo

John Murillo is the writer of 2 poesy collections, Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry and Up Jump the Boogie. Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry is simply a stunning, searing enactment astir the unit done to Black radical successful America. Murillo’s poems consciousness similar confessions and past lessons, condemnations and explosions. He is simply a large storyteller — I recovered it hard to teardrop myself distant from each and each beautifully crafted line, contempt however hard it often was to work them.

Aracelis Girmay

Oh, I conscionable wanted to portion and portion and portion from Girmay’s breathtaking postulation Kingdom Animalia! She writes astir household and location and grief, astir nonaccomplishment and connection, astir bodies and tendency and the earthy satellite and representation and mystery. Even hesitant poesy readers, I suspect, volition autumn successful emotion with her words. It is truthful casual to autumn into these poems, and the worlds they create. They’re not simple, but they are immersive. I’m looking guardant to devouring her different collections, The Black Maria and Teeth.

Layli Long Soldier

Layli Long Soldier has lone published 1 full-length poesy postulation truthful far, but…look, this publication is truthful bully I deliberation it should number for a fewer more, possibly 5 oregon six. It was shortlisted for the 2017 National Book Award, and if there’s 1 publication of poesy from this database I deliberation everyone should read, it’s this one. Whereas is astir the unit done to Native American radical by the U.S. government, astir the legacies of colonization and residential schools, and astir the ways that Indigenous radical person kept their cultures, and themselves, alive. Long Soldier plays with connection and form, interrogates what it means to beryllium a Lakota woman, and invents caller ways of making poems.

Seema Yasmin

Seema Yasmin, successful summation to being a superb poet, is an author, doctor, and journalist. If God Is A Virus is an unthinkable publication astir the Ebola epidemic that broke retired successful Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone successful 2014-2016. There are accepted poem-shaped poems successful this collection, but determination are besides flowcharts, graphs, bingo cards, quotations from the World Health Organization, and more. It’s a almighty postulation astir the intersections of illness, racism, nationalist policy, achromatic saviorism, and medicine.

Monica Sok

Monica Sok’s haunting debut collection, A Nail the Evening Hangs on, is astir the Khmer Rouge genocide, generational trauma, the enactment of healing and the signifier of memory, and what it means (and feels like) to turn up successful diaspora arsenic the kid of refugees. The poems unfold successful a chorus of voices that is some achy and powerful. This is simply a publication to beryllium with and reckon with. I can’t hold to spot what she does next.

Sherwin Bitsui

Sherwin Bitsui is simply a Dine writer from Arizona whose books see Shapeshift, Flood Song, and Dissolve. Flood Song is simply a strange, beautiful, mesmerizing poetic sequence. It is rooted successful landscapes — chaotic urban, dream. Bitsui’s poems are filled with Dine stories and traditions, but they besides person a surreal, gritty prime that feels a small spot similar being successful a cerebral enactment film. In summary: I’ve ne'er work poems rather similar these before.

Ellen Bass

I work my archetypal Ellen Bass publication for past year’s Sealey Challenge, and loved it truthful overmuch that I instantly added the remainder of her enactment to my TBR. She published her archetypal book, I’m Not Your Laughing Daughter, successful 1973. Her latest, Indigo, came retired successful 2020, and it’s my favourite of hers (so far). Her poems are truthful joyful and accessible — she writes astir chickens, home chores, cooking, quiescent mornings, lying successful furniture with her partner. Mules of Love, which I work for this year’s challenge, is afloat of galore gorgeous (and erotic!) poems astir lesbian sex. If you’re a instrumentality of Mary Oliver oregon Ross Gay, you should decidedly cheque retired Bass’s work.