Support small presses and indie bookstores by picking a read from the list below, which features dozens of new books forthcoming in April 2021 from CLMP members. (Take a look at last month’s releases as well.)
Things to Pack on the Way to Everywhere by Grisel Y. Acosta
Get Fresh Books Publishing | April 1, 2021
This poetry collection is “is a blueprint for Afro-Latinx adventurers who want to keep their sanity in a world that does not value the history or contributions of Black/Latinx women.”
Get Fresh Books Publishing | April 1, 2021
The poems in this anthology are, according to Marina Carreira, reminders “of all the brilliant and bold elements of our world, how every word and photograph capture the wild beauty and sacred darkness of existence.”
Get Fresh Books Publishing | April 1, 2021
The poems in Himeles’s debut collection “explore early trauma, various meanings and makings of home, and the struggle to conceive.”
Home is Where You Queer Your Heart
Foglifter Press | April 2021
Edited by by Arisa White, Miah Jeffra, and Monique Mero-Williams, this anthology “explores the complex and varied meanings of ‘home’ through poetry and prose from LGBTQ+ authors around the country.”
Lace & Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens by Ross Gay and Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Get Fresh Books Publishing | April 1, 2021
Originally published by Organic Weapon Arts in 2014, Lace & Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens “captures seasonal changes and life unfolding from the perspective of two gardens: Ross Gay and Aimee Nezhukumatathil.”
The World to Come by David Keplinger
Conduit Books & Ephemera | April 1, 2021
According to Ilya Kaminsky, in these prose poems Keplinger “has an amazing sense of subtext—what is unsaid, in these pages, is perhaps even more important than what is said.”
As If By Magic: Selected Poems by Paula Meehan
Wake Forest University Press | April 1, 2021
In this new poetry collection, Meehan “moves from the feminist to the ecological, from the grittier urban spaces of the north side of center-city Dublin to the suburban spaces outside.”
On the Mesa: An Anthology of Bolinas Writing
The Song Cave | April 1, 2021
In celebration of the anthology’s 50th anniversary, The Song Cave presents an expanded edition of On the Mesa: An Anthology of Bolinas Writing, a gathering of poets, writers and artists living on or around the mesa in Bolinas, California.
Nemerov’s Door: Essays by Robert Wrigley
Tupelo Press | April 1, 2021
This essay collection is “the story of a distinguished and widely celebrated poet’s development, via episodes from his life, and via his examinations of some of the poets whose work has helped to shape his own.”
The Wild Fox of Yemen by Threa Almontaser
Graywolf Press | April 6, 2021
Almontaser’s debut poetry collection is “a love letter to the country and people of Yemen, a portrait of young Muslim womanhood in New York after 9/11, and an extraordinarily composed examination of what it means to carry in the body the echoes of what came before.”
Face: One Square Foot of Skin by Justine Bateman
Akashic Books | April 6, 2021
In this book of fictional vignettes, Bateman “examines the aggressive ways that society reacts to the aging of women’s faces.”
The Amateur Scientist’s Notebook by Jesse DeLong
Baobab Press | April 6, 2021
According to Joanna Klink, DeLong’s debut collection “tracks the intricacy of sunflowers, families, fishing rivers and particles, Idaho farms, chemicals, miners, birds.”
Ross Sings Cheree & the Animated Dark by Ross J. Farrar
Deep Vellum Publishing | April 6, 2021
In this debut poetry collection, Farrar “mulls over the lost landmarks of his youth in San Francisco and a relationship both heartwrenching and ultimately failing.”
Black Manhattan by James Weldon Johnson
Ig Publishing | April 6, 2021
Originally published in 1930, and now back in print with a foreword by Zadie Smith, Black Manhattan “traces the black experience in New York City from the earliest settlements in Chatham Square during the pre-Revolutionary War period to the triumphant achievements of the Harlem Renaissance.”
Subdivision by J. Robert Lennon
Graywolf Press | April 6, 2021
In Lennon’s latest novel, “an unnamed woman checks into a guesthouse in a mysterious district known only as the Subdivision.”
Let Me Think by J. Robert Lennon
Graywolf Press | April 6, 2021
The stories in this collection, “most no more than a few pages, are at once experimental and compulsively readable, the work of an expert craftsman who can sketch whole lives in a mere handful of lines.”
A River Called Time by Courttia Newland
Akashic Books | April 6, 2021
According to Wired, this speculative novel set in parallel Londons “imagines a world where colonialism never happened at all.”
All the Beauty Still Left: A Poet’s Painted Book of Hours by Spencer Reece
Turtle Point Press | April 6, 2021
Reece’s latest book features “over 50 vibrant watercolors inspired by his life journeys and his reflections on faith.”
New Rivers Press | April 6, 2021
According to Cathy Park Hong, Scott’s debut poetry collection is “a magpie’s nest of verbal delights plucked from the late capitalist rituals of wellness, queer kitsch, and text-speak.”
This is Not About Love: Poems by Krystal A. Smith
BLF Press | April 6, 2021
In this poetry collection, Smith “explores the complexities of human emotion and relationships via memory, experience, and imagination.”
Welcome to Sonnetville, New Jersey by Craig Morgan Teicher
BOA Editions, Ltd. | April 6, 2021
Structured around two sequences of sonnets, Teicher’s new poetry collection is “about entering middle age, raising a young family, sustaining a marriage, and taking care of a severely disabled child.”
Blue•bird (bloo-burd) by Joanna Thomas
Milk & Cake Press | April 6, 2021
The poems in this chapbook, “written as lyrical, lovely dictionary entries,” exclude the letter b.
Waterbaby by Nikki Wallschlaeger
Copper Canyon Press | April 6, 2021
In her third collection, Wallschlaeger “turns to water―the natural element of grief―to trace history’s interconnected movements through family, memory, and day-to-day survival.”
American Harvest by Marie Mutsuki Mockett
Graywolf Press | April 7, 2021
In American Harvest, Mockett follows “a group of evangelical wheat harvesters through the heartland as they follow the trail of ripening wheat from Texas to Idaho.”
Be the Thing of Memory by Carrie Olivia Adams
Tolsun Books | April 13, 2021
In this poetry collection, Adams “excavates the stories of women—famous, forgotten, and ordinary—from history and enters into dialogue with them, giving voice to the continuity of experience and humanity that is our shared foundation.”
Exhibitionist by Molly Cross-Blanchard
Coach House Books | April 12, 2021
Amber Dawn writes that in this debut poetry collection, Cross-Blanchard “places the erotic beside mundane so that both are transformed.”
The Complete Poems of San Juan de la Cruz
Milkweed Editions | April 13, 2021
Translated by María Baranda and Paul Hoover, this bilingual edition of San Juan de la Cruz’s poetry “engages with the journey of the soul through the darkest trenches of suffering and despair toward an enlightened spiritual connection with God.”
Coffee House Press | April 13, 2021
According to Brian Evenson, Ducornet’s novel is “a startlingly original look at a post-human and non-human pairing wandering through space while obsessed with the scattered fragments of a world they never knew.”
The Book of Otto and Liam by Paul Griner
Sarabande Books | April 13, 2021
According to George Saunders, Griner’s novel “has something important to teach us about our dangerous national addictions to violence, hostile projection, and political polarization.”
How to be Better by Being Worse by Justin Jannise
BOA Editions, Ltd. | April 13, 2021
Selected by Richard Blanco as winner of the 2019 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, Jannise’s debut poetry collection “freely indulges in harmless wickedness as its speaker grows in self-awareness.”
Milkweed Editions | April 13, 2021
McNamer’s latest novel explores “grief, the mystery of others, and the complexities of old age.”
The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems by Arthur Sze
Copper Canyon Press | April 13, 2021
This decades-spanning selection of Sze’s poetry is “an invitation to immerse in a visionary body of work, mapping the evolution of one of our finest American poets.”
Catalogue d’oiseaux by Aaron Tucker
Book*hug Press | April 13, 2021
Tucker “recounts a year in the life of a couple separated by distance, carefully documenting time spent together and apart” in this new poetry collection.
Milkweed Editions | April 13, 2021
VanderMolen’s poems “illuminate the cycles of human interaction alongside the slow-moving patterns of nature.”
Deerbrook Editions | April 15, 2021
According to Marcia Brown, in this poetry collection the Maine poet laureate “offers up luminous poems of awakenings over the many stages of a life.”
To a New Era by Joanna Fuhrman
Hanging Loose Press | April 15, 2021
Fuhrman’s sixth poetry collection is “a fearless blend of the real and the surreal, the political and the personal, all with the marks of her own kind of accelerated dizzying style.”
things seemed to be breaking by Stuart Kestenbaum
Deerbrook Editions | April 15, 2021
The poems in Kestenbaum’s new collection are, according to Maira Kalman, “beacons of tender, funny, minimalist illumination. ”
Duct-Taped Roses by Billeh Nickerson
Book*hug Press | April 15, 2021
In his latest poetry collection, Nickerson “shares heartbreaks and offers odes and elegies in reflections on family, community, life, and loss.”
Sophia & Mister Walter Whitman by Penelope Scambly Schott
The Poetry Box | April 15, 2021
In this chapbook, Schott offers “a delightful peek inside the mind of a dog through her often entertaining & insightful ‘conversations’ and adopted philosophies of her favorite poet.”
Bye Bye Blackbird by Doreen Stock
The Poetry Box | April 15, 2021
The poems in Stock’s chapbook about her mother “move in mythic time and through the moments of loss and conveyance that characterized this woman’s journey toward the end of her life.”
Italian Lesson by Dianalee Velie
The Poetry Box | April 15, 2021
Velie’s chapbook “celebrates the sights and sounds of Italy—explorations of the local food & drink, sightseeing expeditions, and the lively spirit of the Italian people.”
Harvest Time by Martin Willitts Jr.
Deerbrook Editions | April 18, 2021
According to Megan Merchant, this poetry collection is “an act of deep listening, and an ache of nostalgia that is tethered to simplicity.”
The Violence Almanac by Miah Jeffra
Black Lawrence Press | April 19, 2021
According to Dan Chaon, this collection of short fiction is “formally inventive, transgressive, darkly funny at times, deeply moving at others.”
Litmus Press | April 19, 2021
Translated from the French by Olivia C. Harrison and Teresa Villa-Ignacio, this memoir is “a gripping testimonial to the transnational solidarities forged across the decolonizing world in the 1950s and 60s.”
Water I Won’t Touch by Kayleb Rae Candrilli
Copper Canyon Press | April 20, 2021
Candrilli’s new poetry collection is “a life raft and a self-portrait, concerned with the vitality of trans people living in a dangerous and inhospitable landscape.”
I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers from the World by Kendra DeColo
BOA Editions, Ltd. | April 20, 2021
The poems in this collection “interrogate patriarchal narratives about childbirth, postpartum healing, and motherhood through the lens of pop culture and the political zeitgeist.”
in the morning we are glass by Andra Schwarz
Zephyr Press | April 20, 2021
Schwarz’s “probing, unpunctuated poems take us into her native Lusatia, a region in Eastern Germany near the Polish and Czech borders that has undergone drastic changes from coal mining, politics, and demographic shifts.”
Deep Vellum Publishing | April 21, 2021
Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan, Garréta’s newest novel is “a feminist inversion of a domestic drama crossed with Oulipian nursery rhyme.”
The Solar Grid Issue #1 by Ganzeer
Radix Media | April 21, 2021
Part of the Graphic Narrative Collection, The Solar Grid will be serialized across ten saddle-stitched comics.
Book*hug Press | April 21, 2021
This book of illustrated lyric essays by a pop sensation “paints a stark portrait of a spectacle-driven country.”
The Heat Death of the Universe, and Other Stories by Pamela Zoline
McPherson & Company | April 22, 2021
Zoline’s debut short fiction collection, rereleased in a paperback edition, is, according to Kirkus Reviews, “weird, challenging, distinctive, jolting: a polymathic product of fine writing, mordant commentary, and subtle thinking.”
I Used to Be Korean by Jiwon Choi
Hanging Loose Press | April 26, 2021
According to Terrence Winch, this collection is full of “sharp-tongued poems, often levitating on their own buoyant wit” and “propelled by New York immigrant energy, which of course makes it quintessentially American.”
Dialogues with Rising Tides by Kelli Russell Agodon
Copper Canyon Press | April 27, 2021
In Agodon’s fourth collection, “each poem facilitates a humane and honest conversation with the forces that threaten to take us under.”
Good Night, Earth by Linda Bondestam
Restless Books | April 27, 2021
Translated from the Swedish by Galit Hasan-Rokem, this new title from Restless Books for Young Readers “offers a charming peek at the many ways we settle in for sleep.”
Because the Sun by Sarah Burgoyne
Coach House Books | April 27, 2021
In this poetry collection, Burgoyne “considers the blazing sun as a material symbol of ambient violence—violence absorbed like heat and fired at the nearest victim.”
The Groundhog Forever by Henry Hoke
WTAW Press | April 27, 2021
According to Kimberly King Parsons, Hoke’s debut is a “radiant, shapeshifting novel about fame, friendship, the ecstasy and agony of repetition, and The Divine Bill Murray.”
The Naomi Letters by Rachel Mennies
BOA Editions, Ltd. | April 27, 2021
Structured as an epistolary narrative, this poetry collection “chronicles the relationship between a woman speaker and Naomi, the woman she loves.”
Book*hug Press | April 27, 2021
According to Lisa Moore, this debut novel explores “love between women, reproductive rights, rural Newfoundland and a brave, absolutely fierce feminism.”
Poem That Never Ends by Silvina López Medin
Essay Press | April 30, 2021
In this hybrid collection, López Medin “weaves together poems and family photos to explore the fragmentation of time, memory, and mother-child relationships.”
