Bøger i Button Poetry serien

2021 Button Poetry Short Form Poetry Contest Winner What I Learned from the Trees delves into the intricate relationship between humans and nature, and how these often overlooked, everyday interactions affect us as individuals, families, and communities. With a backbone rooted in primordial imagery and allegory, and a focus on how the growing disconnect with our own wants, needs, and fears creates deeper divides in our relationships, this collection is notably relevant to today's society and the struggles we face with the ever-expanding detachment between humans and the natural world. Aren't all living creatures seeking a notable existence? A deep sense of belonging? Of relevance? Of purpose? Of love? How often do we yearn for these wants, yet fight the vulnerability it takes to reach them? Why do we so clearly seek each other, yet refuse to reach out our hands?

In its five year anniversary edition, Topaz Winters' Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing returns with ten new poems, a revised body of work, & a foreword by bestselling author Blythe Baird. An examination of desire as religion, food as compulsion, & illness as a gut reflex in the face of girlhood's little violences, Portrait haunts the landscape of self-mythology & cuts straight into its own marrow. This book is a howl in the night, a fracture through the dark, as omnivorous & revelatory today as it was five years ago. "Must I say it to survive?" asks its speaker, balanced on the knife's edge between confessional & manifesto. "Then I will."

2023 Midwest Book Award Winner 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist Darius Simpson's debut collection Never Catch Me centers on Black boyhood in the midwest and familial disintegration over time. Simpson pulls back the curtain, exposing the violence enacted against and upon, Black bodies, and yet, still, each poem is saturated in revolution and hope. Never Catch Me is the anthem necessary to organize a community that is committed to a better right now-one that can only be achieved with an intensity and action that goes far beyond the page.

"A sci-fi-flavored exploration of the role that art and artists play in resisting authoritarianism. Featuring new poems, theater elements, and visual art by Casper Pham, the book follows two wandering poets as they make their way from village to village, across a prison colony moon full of exiled rebels, robots, and storytellers. Part post-apocalyptic road journal, part alternate universe ode to Hip Hop, and part 'Letters to a Young Poet'-style toolkit for emerging poets and aspiring movement-builders, it's also a one-of-a-kind practitioners' take on poetry, power, and possibility"--

"Rings on every finger. Hood and educated AF. You've met her. Wearing all her feelings and responding with a side-eye or a tongue-pop. You've seen her. At the grocery store. In restaurants. On the subway. At the bus stop. In a car you pulled up next to blaring whatever matches her mood. Hair in some natural or protective style for the Gods. Ebony Stewart. An around the way girl. One part human, all parts womxn. You know these poems because they be familiar. They be your grandmama, mama, auntie, and sis stories. Welcome to Home. Girl. Hood."--Back cover.

Still Can't Do My Daughter's Hair is the latest book by author William Evans, founder of Black Nerd Problems. Evans is a long-standing voice in the performance poetry scene, who has performed at venues across the country and been featured on numerous final stages, including the National Poetry Slam and Individual World Poetry Slam. Evans's commanding, confident style shines through in these poems, which explore masculinity, fatherhood, and family, and what it means to make a home as a black man in contemporary America.

"Words can only help you if you speak them." -Crown Noble, Bianca PhippsLatinx, queer, poet Bianca Phipps dissects intimate family relationships in hopes of understanding conflict as a means of overcoming. Phipps' debut explores an alternate timeline version of her own childhood and by moving back and forth between those timelines she highlights her own generational inheritance while inviting us to discover our own. A College Spoken Word Phenom, Bianca is no stranger to plucking the heartstrings of readers and listeners. In Crown Noble she translates that charisma and flair for language to help her readers discover - even in the depths of hardship - the joy of family, of language, and of reclaiming your own story. --- Praise for Crown Noble "Bianca brings her heartbreak to life by continuing to build from it. What a joy that we get to hold what Bianca has grown." - Melissa Lozada-Oliva, author of Peluda "[Crown Noble] is a stunning meditation on familial bonds, inheritance, and what we owe to where we come from." - Kevin Kantor, author of Please Come Off-Book

"Rachel Wiley, an author who holds many intersecting identities, has written [this book of poetry] as a love letter to her living body. When confronted with fatphobia, racism, misogyny, and shame, each poem chooses self-love, despite society's expectations of conformity. More than just a book about one single identity, [this book] makes intersectionality dimensional"--Publisher marketing.

This debut collection plunges deep into the dissection of popular culture, exposing and how the brightness and horrors of it can be mirrors into the daily lived experiences of women in America.

We Slept Here is a case study in vulnerability and honesty. In this sequence of memoir-esque poems, Sierra DeMulder pulls at the threads of a past abusive relationship and the long road to forgiveness. The poems themselves become which was taken from her. These are hard poems, made up of clarity and healing, which attempt to share some of their peace with the world.

2014 Button Poetry Prize Winner "These harrowing poems make montage, make mirrors, make elegiac biopic, make 'a dope ass trailer with a hundred black children / smiling into the camera & the last shot is the wide mouth of a pistol.' That's no spoiler alert, but rather, Smith's way-saying & laying it beautifully bare. A way of desensitizing the reader from his own defenses each time this long, black movie repeats."-Marcus Wicker "Danez Smith's BLACK MOVIE is a cinematic tour-de-force that lets poetry vie with film for the honor of which medium can most effectively articulate the experience of Black America."-Rain Taxi

"Butcher is a book about love & loss--about being unapologetic and transparent in grief. Natasha finds an unexpected solace in the kitchen after losing her best friend and brother, Marcus. Here, using the cuts of the cow as a metaphor, Miller explores addiction, family & tragedy. Butcher takes the body of a cow and cleaves it into 5 parts: envisioning the cuts as relationship with family members and social forces. Her Mother the rib, her Brother the brisket, her queerness as the tongue and cheek... Butcher is raw and tender. It's a book that tells the story of a woman who redefined success after losing the most valuable thing to her."--Amazon.com

One part mixtape, one part disorientation guide, and one part career retrospective, Kyle "Guante" Tran Myhre's debut looks you directly in the eye and doesn't let you flinch. Ranging from justice to love, community action to personal reflection, A Love Song, A Death Rattle, A Battle Cry is a dedication to craft. Clocking in before the rest of us are even awake, the book wastes no time. It does the work and beckons you to follow. A compilation of poems, lyrics and essays from the UN presenter, MC, and two-time National Poetry Slam champion, this book is a love song tucked into a grenade, a necessary call that demands a response.

"[The author] uses pop culture and persona as entryways to explore themes such as family, friendship, race, love, and police brutality within the lives of his Midwestern black speakers"--

Exploring the relationship between blackness, shame, and what it is to live a life tied to the church, this collection is rich with historical context and a deeply engaging personal narrative.

With work that ranges from the laugh out loud funny to the silence of rage and loss, Forgive Yourself These Tiny Acts of Self-Destruction is a must read.This is a collection of work that asks itself for forgiveness while becoming an instruction manual on how readers can follow suit. These complex and passionate poems make space for a narrative about the self in the wake of destruction. It explores American culture and examines how Singers identity as a Jewish American underpins daily life. This book tells us that forgiveness has the power to grant a release from the shame we carry about our decisions. Forgive yourself was written from a place of vulnerability and pushes us towards compassion for the person we are with the most, ourselves. Forgive Yourself is a modern handbook for finding yourself and your place without losing your way. Advance praise for Forgive Yourself These Tiny Acts of Forgiveness Jared Singer has constructed deeply nuanced, breathtakingly honest pieces for his readers to revisit often, making new discoveries each time. This collection asserts Singer as an authentic, confessional voice capable of creating depth and complexity that begs for further opening and unraveling. -- Chris August, author of Loving InstrumentsJared Singer is an honest, gentle, fearless engineer who has compiled an in-depth and thorough instruction manual on how to hope, to survive, to cope, and to champion beauty. -- Mighty Mike McGee, ArtistJared Singer's bone shattering honesty is disarming, and delightful. -Rico Frederick, Author of Broken CalypsonianFollowing themes of childhood, self-image, social justice, love, and magic, this collection makes good on its promise of absolution. -- Brendan Constantine, Author Letters to Guns

2023 The Black Caucus of the American Library Association - Poetry Winner 2022 Heartland Bookseller Awards Finalist A Peculiar People creates an entire microcosm within these poems. Steven Willis crafts a cast of characters, showcasing their struggles, identities, & underlying emotions. Willis champions the art of storytelling: weaving pop-culture and screenwriting elements to allow the reader to view this social commentary with a fresh lens. This collection examines the author's life experience; the pain of being Black and facing systemic racism.

This book of poetry "queers the theatrical canon we all grew up with. Kantor critiques the treatment of queer figures and imagines a braver and bolder future that allows queer voices the agency over their own stories. Drawing upon elements of the Aristotelian dramatic structure and the Hero's Journey, [this] is both a love letter to and a ... critique of American culture and the lenses we choose to see ourselves through"--Publisher marketing.

Alternate Cover Limited Edition!Helium is the debut poetry collection by internet phenom Rudy Francisco, whose work has defined poetry for a generation of new readers. Rudy's poems and quotes have been viewed and shared millions of times as he has traveled the country and the world performing for sell-out crowds. Helium is filled with work that is simultaneously personal and political, blending love poems, self-reflection, and biting cultural critique on class, race and gender into an unforgettable whole. Ultimately, Rudy's work rises above the chaos to offer a fresh and positive perspective of shared humanity and beauty.