Support small presses and indie bookstores by picking a read from the list below, which features new books forthcoming in April 2022 from CLMP members.
Tupelo Press | April 1, 2022
According to Cole Swensen, City Scattered “offers a range of spliced voices that construct a multi-perspectival musing on ‘the new woman’ as she emerged in the labor and consumer culture of Germany between the wars.”
April at the Ruins by Lawrence Raab
Tupelo Press | April 1, 2022
Donald Revell says, “This is a book of summonings: into the dark wood; into the night music which might be, if memory proves to be something other than an abyss, the frontier of eternity.”
Today in the Taxi by Sean Singer
Tupelo Press | April 1, 2022
According to Laurie Sheck, “Sean Singer’s radiant and challenging body of work involves, much like Whitman’s, nothing less than the ongoing interrogation of what a poem is.”
The Song Cave | April 1, 2022
Collins’s second book of poems is “a deeply personal collection that explores the ways our notions of daily life touch the presence of the eternal.”
All the Stars Aflame by Malik Abduh
Get Fresh Books Publishing | April 1, 2022
In his debut poetry collection, Abduh “relates the brutal legacy of U.S. racial violence, including lynchings, riots, uprisings, & political assassinations, told in the voices of those who experienced these tragedies firsthand.”
A Mouthful of Sky by Anu Mahadev
Get Fresh Books Publishing | April 1, 2022
According to Sarah Vap, in this poetry collection “sensual and sexual pleasures, joys, and freedoms are woven together with gendered inequities, misogyny, and cruelty.”
Receta by Mario José Pagán Morales
great weather for MEDIA | April 4, 2022
This debut collection “is a story of becoming a poet. This poet. Boricua and part of a proud tradition of Nuyorican poets before and around him.”
Lunar Tides by Shannon Webb-Campbell
Book*hug Press | April 4, 2022
The poems in this collection “explore the primordial connections between love, grief, and water, structured within the lunar calendar.”
Graywolf Press | April 5, 2022
According to Franny Choi, “With abundant sonics, formal virtuosity, and a rigorous queer erotic, Alabi proves that every inheritance can be both wound and portal.”
A Few Collectors by Pierre Le-Tan
New Vessel Press | April 5, 2022
In this illustrated volume, “artist Pierre Le-Tan, known for designing New Yorker magazine covers and collaborations with fashion houses, summons up memories of inveterate art collectors.”
Red Hen Press | April 5, 2022
In these poems, Morgan “explores the discovery, or recovery, of the true Self—the Self that abides within and survives the changes of time, memory, and circumstance.”
Mausoleum of Flowers by Daniel B. Summerhill
CavanKerry Press | April 5, 2022
Summerhill’s second poetry collection “grabs fate by the throat and confronts it, placing the focus on what it means to live despite your friends dying beside you.”
Souvenirs by Andrew Colarusso and Karen An-hwei Lee
Baobab Press | April 5, 2022
A collaboration between Andrew Colarusso and Karen An-hwei Lee, this “collection of visions shared across cyberspace… celebrates fragments from the literary afterlife.”
Cartoon Logic, Cartoon Violence by Alexus Erin
Baobab Press | April 5, 2022
This poetry collection “is a meditation on being a creator while feeling utterly like a caricature—a cartoon, an exaggeration, an actualization of a metaphor.”
Am I Even a Bee? by Felicity Muth
Illustrated by Alexa Lindauer
Baobab Press | April 5, 2022
This picture book “is the story of Osmia, a solitary bee, decidedly green and unquestionably un-fuzzy.”
634 Ways to Kill Fidel by Fabián Escalante
Seven Stories Press | April 5, 2022
This book is a “sprawling account of the various, creative, often bizarre, yet incredibly disturbing attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.”
Count Belisarius by Robert Graves
Seven Stories Press | April 5, 2022
Set in the sixth century, this historical novel is written in the form of a biography by Belisarius’s manservant.
How Chet Baker Died by Barry Gifford
Seven Stories Press | April 5, 2022
In his latest collection, Gifford surprises “his readers in kaleidoscopic prisms of color, turning every breath into a story, and himself into his most colorful character.”
Today is Tomorrow by Caroline Kurtz
Catalyst Press | April 5, 2022
This memoir is “a deeply personal examination of South Sudan at war—and a woman at war with herself.”
What I See: The Black Flag Photographs of Glen E. Friedman by Glen E. Friedman
Akashic Books | April 5, 2022
What I See is “a stunning collection of the most iconic photographs ever made of Black Flag, along with never-before-seen photos and a foreword by Chuck Dukowski.”
Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System by M. Chris Fabricant
Akashic Books | April 5, 2022
In this book, Innocence Project attorney M. Chris Fabricant “presents an insider’s journey into the heart of a broken, racist system of justice and the role junk science plays in maintaining the status quo.”
Black Sun Lit | April 5, 2022
This poetry collection “is a pointillist portrait that catalogs a tripartite digestion process of being-in-the-world.”
The Bern Book: A Record of a Voyage of the Mind by Vincent O. Carter
Dalkey Archive | April 5, 2022
The Bern Book is “a travelogue, a memoir… and a meditation on the myth and reality of race in midcentury Europe and America.”
After Beowulf by Nicole Markotić
Coach House Books | April 5, 2022
According to Wayde Compton, “Markotić takes the original English-language epic and reprocesses it. That is, she rereads, rewrites, reimagines, rethinks, and retells it, all at the same time.”
Heady Bloom by Andrew Faulkner
Coach House Books | April 5, 2022
This poetry collection explores “Faulkner’s world of the never-ending, low-grade headache, a medical issue resolved only by striking up a committed relationship with the slippery miracle that is Advil.”
BOA Editions | April 5, 2022
In her latest collection of poems, Meitner “explores memory, passion, and the various ways the body sees and is seen.”
And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight by Lynn Xu
Wave Books | April 5, 2022
Xu’s book-length poem is “part protest against reality, part metaphysical reckoning, part internationale for the world-historical surrealist insurgency, and part arte povera for the wretched of the earth.”
Translated from Spanish by Robin Myers
Wave Books | April 5, 2022
Copy is “a prose poem sequence that insinuates an experience of violent removal: a person’s disappearance from a country, from normal life, and forcible reintegration into a new social and existential configuration.”
Plenitude by Daniel Sarah Karasik
Book*hug Press | April 7, 2022
This poetry collection “cartwheels towards a world that might be: a world without cops or bosses, without prisons, without oppressive regulation of gender and desire.”
Hey Girl, Are You in the Experimental Group? by Shareen K. Murayama
Harbor Editions | April 8, 2022
According to Arielle Greenberg, Murayama “explores the complex notions of the model minority and privilege and their bearing on Asian-American identity.”
Gossypiin by Ra Malika Imhotep
Red Hen Press | April 12, 2022
In these poems, Imhotep “invites us to lean in and listen good as the text interrupts the narrative silence around sexual harm, sickness, and the marks they make on black femme subjectivity.”
Grid Books | April 12, 2022
In Drive, Sexton “explores our most fragile points of connection—to lovers and family, to the living and the dead, and to oneself, one’s own life’s work—with the care and wisdom of one who knows these roads.”
The most beautiful garden by Nikita Rimal Sharma
Yellow Arrow Publishing | April 12, 2022
In this poetry chapbook, Sharma “walks us through the people, places, and experiences that shaped her becoming.”
Fire Season: Selected Essays, 1984–2021 by Gary Indiana
Seven Stories Press | April 12, 2022
In these selected essays, Indiana “serves up sometimes bitchy, always generous, erudite, and joyful assessments from the last thirty-five years of cutting edge film, art, and literature.”
Hebrew Myths by Robert Graves and Raphael Patai
Seven Stories Press | April 12, 2022
Hebrew Myths is “a scholarly approach to sixty-one stories from the book of Genesis, following in the lucid format of Graves’ canonical The Greek Myths.”
You Have Not Yet Been Defeated by Alaa Abd el-Fattah
Seven Stories Press | April 12, 2022
These essays, social media posts, and interviews “present not only a unique account from the frontline of a decade of global upheaval, but a catalogue of ideas about other futures those upheavals could yet reveal.”
Stricken: Poems in the Time of Covid by Gail Gauldin Moore
Deerbrook Editions | April 12, 2022
Moore’s latest poetry collection “takes us to the deepest places grief can touch inside our lives.”
Country of Origin by Dalia Azim
Deep Vellum/A Strange Object | April 12, 2022
This novel “is a multigenerational family saga that cuts between political revolution in 1950s Egypt and the personal revolutions of four family members whose lives intersect around the disappearance of one of their own.”
Initial Coordinates by Monika Herceg
Translated from Croatian by Marina Veverec
Sandorf Passage | April 12, 2022
According to Miljenko Jergović, this is “the first and the last book of the new Croatian poetry.”
Whitemud Walking by Matthew James Weigel
Coach House Books | April 12, 2022
Whitemud Walking is “an Indigenous resistance historiography, poetry that interrogates the colonial violence of the archive.”
Translated from Korean by Anton Hur
Feminist Press | April 12, 2022
In this novel set over the course of one summer in Seoul, Shin “explores misogyny, erasure, and repressed desire.”
Two Brown Dots by Danni Quintos
BOA Editions | April 12, 2022
Selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil as the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, this poetry collection “carves a space for brown girls and weird girls.”
The Optimist Shelters in Place by Kimberly Ann Priest
Harbor Editions | April 14, 2022
According to Lisa Fay Coutley, Priest “embraces love and grief through the lens of collective tragedy and the lived experience of a woman alone, attempting to steady self by tending plants and to-do lists and maintaining bonds with her grown kids over FaceTime.”
Ugly Duckling Presse | April 15, 2022
According to Anne Waldman, Elixir is “a multi-personaed action movie, a love poem, a trip down memory lane, a Kulchur lexicon, an ode to NYC and tribute to exotic ports everywhere.”
Translated from Ukrainian by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps
Lost Horse Press | April 15, 2022
The tenth volume in the Lost Horse Press Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry Series, Dream Bridge “leads us down an invisible path that keeps shifting, transforming us and our ideas of poetry.”
In Memory of a Banyan Tree: Poems of the Outside World: 1985-2022 by Michael Rothenburg
Lost Horse Press | April 15, 2022
This selection of Rothenburg’s poetry features “poems relating to nature, ecology, and eco-poetics… a watershed account of an intimate relationship with the outside world.”
Three Wooden Trunks by Virlana Tkacz
Lost Horse Press | April 15, 2022
Three Wooden Trunks is a collection of poems “about memory and the poet’s Ukrainian roots, and of the poet’s family’s pursuit of a sweeter, easier life in America.”
The Country Where Everyone’s Name Is Fear by Boris and Lyudmyla Khersonsky
Lost Horse Press | April 15, 2022
Edited by Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris, these poems from Ukraine at the start of the 21st century “speak about the memory of historical trauma and witness stark individual voices that pierce through the wall of complacency.”
Book*hug Press | April 19, 2022
This novel “is a pitiless, bold work of intense psychological realism narrated by a professionally successful but socially bankrupt anti-hero who expects global connection and local anonymity.”
I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom by Kim Dower
Red Hen Press | April 19, 2022
This book collects Dower’s “poems on being a mother—childbirth to empty nest—as well as being a daughter with all the teenaged messiness, drama and conflict, to finally caring for one’s mother suffering from dementia.”
Bellevue Literary Press | April 19, 2022
Phillips’s debut is a “novel of personal awakening that offers a withering critique of toxic philanthropy and the American meritocracy.”
Translated from Slovenian by Matthew Moore
Black Ocean | April 19, 2022
According to Alen Hamza, “Opera Buffa stuns the reader with its imaginative flair, energetic wit, and existential reach.”
Casual Conversation by Renia White
BOA Editions | April 19, 2022
White’s debut poetry collection “strikes up a conversation, considering what’s being said, what isn’t, and where it all comes from.”
Nightboat Books | April 19, 2022
Of Mineral is “a collection of lyric meditations cultivated from a deeply personal experience of the natural world, synthesizing the poet’s experiences of the elemental and ephemeral; presence and place.”
The House of Grana Padano by Meg Pokrass and Jeff Friedman
Pelekinesis | April 20, 2022
In The House of Grana Padano, “each shimmering micro story hovers between standup comedy and the unfolding of tragedy, between the mask and the mirror.”
The Fact of Memory: 114 Ruminations and Fabrications by Aaron Angello
Rose Metal Press | April 21, 2022
In this collection of short prose pieces, Angello “explores the subtleties of recollection, imagination, and the connections, both momentary and long-lasting, between oneself and others.”
Burrow Press | April 22, 2022
In this poetry collection, Siegel “investigates the in-between: windows, porches, drawers, bedrooms, and basements are portals to examine how language shapes and is shaped, and to what ends.”
The Dark Safekeeping by Gloria Nixon-John
Mayapple Press | April 22, 2022
According to Terry Bohnhorst Blackhawk, in these poems Nixon-John is “elegantly observant of the natural world (as gardener, horsewoman, admirer or rescuer of all manner of wildlife).”
Cat’s Tongue by Kathleen Winter
Texas Review Press | April 22, 2022
In her latest poetry collection, Winter “engages with incidents in her Texas youth that range from traumatic to ecstatic—strewing oilfields, deer, drug dealers, and football games in between.”
Your Nostalgia is Killing Me by John Weir
Red Hen Press | April 26, 2022
In eleven linked stories, Weir “brings his wit and compassion to the question of how a gay white guy from New Jersey lived through fifty years of the twin crises of global AIDS and toxic masculinity in America.”
Che Guevara Reader by Ernesto Che Guevara
Seven Stories Press | April 26, 2022
These collected writings from Ernesto Che Guevara “highlight his principled politics and praxis in the fight against capitalism and US imperialism.”
I Wear My Face in the Field by Ryan Downum
Dream Pop Press | April 26, 2022
According to Johannes Göransson, “this frighteningly assured, sharp-aimed little book of animal poems gets at the weirdness of nature.”
new mythologies by Kym Cunningham
Dream Pop Press | April 26, 2022
According to Candice Wuehle, this poetry collection “reads like an ancient text encoded with secret wisdom, tacit magics, and the body’s truths.”
Dream Pop Press | April 26, 2022
Jennifer Hasegawa says, “The poems in BLUE 4 U are a journey through a shape-shifting house of dream, risk, and longing.”
Deerbrook Editions | April 26, 2022
The ten Maine writers featured in this anthology edited by Jeffrey Haste, Martin Steingesser, and Judy Tierney “investigate those profound memories that shape us throughout our lives and examine the natural world that can transform us every day.”
A Strange Woman by Leylâ Erbil
Translated from Turkish by Amy Spangler and Nermin Menemencioğlu
Deep Vellum | April 26, 2022
This debut novel “by one of Turkey’s most radical female authors tells the story of an aspiring intellectual in a complex, modernizing country.”
Their Four Hearts by Vladimir Sorokin
Translated from Russian by Max Lawton
Dalkey Archive | April 26, 2022
This “grotesque, absurdist” novel “follows four individuals set upon a common goal of destruction and violence.”
Field Notes from the Flood Zone by Heather Sellers
BOA Editions | April 26, 2022
This poetry collection is “an elegy for the two great shaping forces in a life, heartbreaking family struggle and a collective lost treasure, our stunning, singular, desecrated Florida, and all its remnant beauty.”
50 Things Kate Bush Taught Me About the Multiverse by Karyna McGlynn
Sarabande Books | April 26, 2022
According to Cate Marvin, these poems “are like those spectacular mixed cocktails that carry our troubles away: they are spiked with the oddest ingredients and supremely intoxicating. I love their daring, their deep-diving humor.”
The Lost Conversation by Sara Farrington
53rd State Press | April 28, 2022
The Lost Conversation is a “collection of interviews conducted between 2019-2021 with New York theater artists who have spent their lives working in and inventing the avant-garde.”
