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Poetry

  • Can I Kick It?

    by Idris Goodwin

    Award-winning poet and playwright Idris Goodwin interrogates and remixes our cultural past in order to make sense of our present and potential futures.

  • Crossfire

    by Staceyann Chin

    Powerhouse, world-renowned LGBTQ poet and spoken-word artist Staceyann Chin curates the first full-length collection of her poems.

  • Everything Must Go

    by Kevin Coval

    Award-winning poet Kevin Coval and graphic artist Langston Allston bear witness to the effects of gentrification in a Chicago neighborhood.

  • Bloodstone Cowboy

    by Kara Jackson

  • 1919

    by Eve L. Ewing

    Reflections on race, class, violence, segregation, and the hidden histories that shape our divided urban landscapes.

  • Build Yourself a Boat

    by Camonghne Felix
    Build Yourself a Boat redefines the language of collective and individual trauma through lyric and memory.

  • The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 3

    Edited by Fatimah Asghar and Safia Elhillo
    A BreakBeat Poets anthology of writings by Muslims who are women, queer, genderqueer, nonbinary, or trans.

  • Milwaukee Avenue

    by Kevin Coval
    “Milwaukee Avenue” is Kevin Coval's longest single poem, inspired by Frank O'Hara's “Second Avenue.” It wrestles with what...

  • On My Way To Liberation

    by H. Melt
    How do you imagine trans liberation while living in a cis world? On My Way To Liberation follows a gender nonconforming body moving through the...

  • Black Queer Hoe

    by Britteney Black Rose Kapri
    A refreshing, unapologetic intervention into ongoing conversations about the line between sexual freedom and sexual exploitation.

  • Citizen Illegal

    by José Olivarez
    Citizen Illegal is a revealing portrait of life as a first generation immigrant, a celebration of Chicano joy, a shout against erasure, and a vibrant re-imagining of Mexican American life.

  • Graphite

    by Patricia Frazier

    Patricia Frazier’s Graphite is an ode to her grandmother and childhood home, the Ida B. Wells Projects, both which the poet lost to...

  • The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2

    Edited by Mahogany L. Browne, Idrissa Simmonds, et al.
    A BreakBeat Poets anthology to celebrate and canonize the words of Black women across the diaspora.

  • Human Highlight

    by Kevin Coval and Idris Goodwin

    Kevin Coval and Idris Goodwin pay poetic homage to slam dunk virtuoso Dominique Wilkins, and creativity & improvisation in the game of basketball.

  • Commando

    by E'mon Lauren

  • Electric Arches

    by Eve L. Ewing
    Original meditations on race, gender, identity, and the joy and pain of growing up, from a distinctive new voice.

  • The Whiskey of our Discontent

    Edited by Quraysh Ali Lansana and Georgia A. Popoff
    Reflections on the profound influence of poet, educator, and social activist Gwendolyn Brooks through examinations of her life and work.

  • My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter

    by Aja Monet
    Powerful, poetic meditations on motherhood, sisterhood, spirituality, solidarity, displacement/gentrification, racism, and sexism.

  • A People's History of Chicago

    by Kevin Coval
    Named "Best Chicago Poet" by The Chicago Reader, Kevin Coval channels Howard Zinn to celebrate the Windy City's hidden history.

  • Inauguration

    by Idris Goodwin and Nico Wilkinson
    Inauguration is a collection of ten poems written in reaction to the onset of the Trump era.

  • 1989, The Number

    by Kevin Coval and Nate Marshall
    For hip-hop heads 89 was the peak of the Golden Era and the Crack Epidemic.

  • Before the Next Bomb Drops

    by Remi Kanazi
    Before the Next Bomb Drops explores the Israeli occupation of Palestine and US militarism through a poetic lens.

  • The BreakBeat Poets

    Edited by Kevin Coval, Quraysh Ali Lansana, et al.
    A first-of-its-kind anthology of hip-hop poetica written for and by the people.

  • More than an Athlete

    by Etan Thomas
    In this, his first collection of poems, Etan Thomas defies the stereotype of the a-political athlete.