Poem-a-Day - 2024 Summer Books

36 Dwellings 
by Jan M. Padios
Burrow Press
July 2024, limited edition paperback, $20

A literary-architectural hybrid project, 36 Dwellings sketches fault lines within a Filipinx family, linking intimate harm to the forces of colonialism and labor migration. “A haunting cartography of memory and movement.” –Monica Ong

Fling Diction
by Frances Cannon
Green Writers Press
February 2024, Paperback, $16.95

Fling Diction is about the vulnerability of desire, including queer love, polyamory, familial drama, dog/human companionship, and longing in isolation—experiences intensified by the sensuality and ferocity of nature, the speaker’s blunders, embraces, and revelations.

Cassandra: A Dramatic Poem
by Lesia Ukrainka (Larysa Kosach)
translated by Nina Murray
introduced by Marko Pavlyshyn
Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature
June 2024, Hardcover $29.95, Paperback $19.95, ebook $19.95
 
Lesia Ukrainka (Larysa Kosach), a cult Ukrainian feminist writer of the early 20th century, reimagines the story of Cassandra whose true prophecies are not believed by her people because she’s a woman and a poet.

A Map Of My Want 
by Faylita Hicks
Haymarket Books
July 2024, Paperback, $17

A Map of My Want follows a nonbinary femme as they explore the sensual intersection of the personal and the political, a crossroads to which their sexual liberation brought them after their escape from a religious cult.

book of provocations
by mónica teresa ortiz
Host Publications
July 2024, Paperback, $20

In fragmented lyric and explosive song, book of provocations explores catastrophe, illustrating in verse the refusal of the human spirit to submit to systems of oppression, and its undying cry for liberation.

Fall Creek
by Lyn Hejinian
Litmus Press
April 2024, Paperback, $18

A new book-length lyric from one of our most prolific contemporary poets and thinkers. Fall Creek swirls the literal with the littoral, sediment with sentiment, compounding a poetry of everyday life in all its plenitude.

Leaving Biddle City 
by Marianne Chan
Sarabande 
July 2024, Paperback, $17.95

Leaving Biddle City details one Filipina American speaker’s experience of growing up amid a white, Midwestern suburbia mythologized as “Biddle City.” What’s achieved is a work of great play and meticulous beauty.

The Bamboo Wife
by Leona Sevick
Trio House Press
July 2024, Paperback $18, Ebook $9.99

Leona Sevick's The Bamboo Wife captures the experiences of an imperfect woman held up against the standard of "good" wife and mother.

Self-Mythology 
by Saba Keramati
University of Arkansas
April 2024, Paperback, $19.95

Blending the personal and the political, Self-Mythology explores multiraciality and the legacy of exile alongside Keramati’s uniquely American origin as the only child of political refugees from China and Iran. 

Wager 
by Adele Elise Williams
University of Arkansas
April 2024, Paperback, $19.95


Wager is a raucous debut celebrating fearlessness and determination wrested from strife. In the southern gothic world of her poems, Williams tangles with perceived failures as a wayward daughter, recovering addict, and skeptical scholar.

Santa Tarantula
by Jordan Pérez
University of Notre Dame Press
February 2024, Paperback, $18

Jordan Pérez grants a haunting voice to the voiceless, delves into Cuban history and identity, and confronts trauma and violence in her debut collection Santa Tarantula, the tenth winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize.