15 New Poetry Collections That'll Inspire You

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Prepare yourself for some amazing new poetry books out soon!

Kelley O'Brien

Sep 12, 2019

New Poetry Collections to Read That Will Inspire You

National Poetry Month in April is ways off, but it's always a good time to read poetry, including these new and upcoming poetry collections.

Poet Laureate Rita Dove said poetry is "language at its most distilled and most powerful" and we couldn't agree more. Poetry is a form of literature that evokes a lot of emotion in the reader. It can express what other forms of writing can't, and the wonderful thing is that, given there are so many fantastic poets today, there's always someone releasing new and exciting poetry books.

We hope you give these new and upcoming poetry collections a read and enjoy them just as much as we know will. Maybe you'll even discover your new favorite writer!

Before you continue, we'd like you to know that there are affiliate links in this post. This means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the following links.

1. How to Be a Poet by J. M. Farkas

Amazon

"avenge your mother. invent

a girl with a reckless heart.

free her in her tower. be a thief,

snatch time, every time you write..."

How to Be a Poet will be released November 5, 2019

2. Aphrodite Made Me Do It by Trista Mateer

Amazon

"I didn't forget how to fight for myself.

I forgot that I could."

Aphrodite Made Me Do It will be released October 1, 2019

3. Odes to Lithium by Shira Erlichman

Amazon

"Our first kiss wasn't behind the high school. Not in the movie theater's back row. Not after the first breakdown. It went like this: Me, released from the hospital jail with a fresh prescription, one bag packed, staying at a friend's house, with no exit plan or exist plan."

Odes to Lithium will be released September 15, 2019

4. Mistress by Chet’la Sebree

Amazon

"I am black wench,

wench Sally, African Venus, Sarah Hemings,

and I cannot be your coalmine canary,

cannot tell you which man will be true."

Mistresses will be released October 15, 2019

5. Swallowtail by Brenna Twohy

Amazon

"Peach pits are poisonous. This is not a mistake.

Girlhood is growing fruit

around cyanide. It will never be yours for the swallowing."

Swallowtail will be released October 1, 2019

6. Felon by Reginald Dwayne Betts

Amazon

"You come home & become a parade

of confessions that leave you drowning,

lost recounting the disappeared years"

Felon will be released October 15, 2019

7. How to Cure a Ghost by Fariha Róisín

Amazon

"everything about me

is sticky, like a curse,

i come undone, like yarn,

unspooling on the ground."

How to Cure a Ghost will be released September 24, 2019

8. Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry

Amazon

Hustling Verse will be released October 15, 2019

9. HoodWitch by Faylita Hicks

Amazon

"something that can & will survive

a whole century of hunt."

HoodWitch will be released October 15, 2019

10. Bodega by Su Hwang

Amazon

"the price

of doing business in the projects where we

were trapped inside human cages—binding us

in a strange circus where atoms of haves

and have-nots always forcefully collide."

Bodega will be released October 8, 2019

11. Grief Sequence by Prageeta Sharma

Amazon

"Seclusion may kill your heart in the process of producing the love-stained stench in your poems, the ones containing boundaries of shame with their sober problems"

Grief Sequence will be released September 17, 2019