The same could be said of the whole collection. The award “honors a unified and complete sequence of poems” and the judges said that “From a bitter landscape, this unblinking sequence manages to wrest a celebration of black lives, fusing metaphor and emotion in a transformative whole.” Eliot Foundation and Poetry Society of America’s Four Quartets Prize this April. The long-form poem “summer, somewhere” that comprises the book’s first section was awarded the inaugural T. Their first book, boy (YesYes Books, 2014) won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award.ĭon’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017) is Smith’s second, and it was a finalist for the National Book Award. Smith read what must be the dirtiest, funniest, and most celebratory butt-sex poem in the world. Paul, MN.” My first experience with them (Smith’s pronoun of choice) was at a Prince-themed poetry/dance party at First Avenue in Minneapolis, one of the locations for Purple Rain. “summer, somewhere”) in ways and in language so precise and evocative that we lament and yearn right along with these searing, soaring poems.ĭanez Smith identifies as a “Black, queer, poz writer & performer from St.

“you’re dead, america”) and imagine others (e.g. They confront the world(s) we live in (e.g. This book made me slam it shut a few times to keep from weeping in restaurants. There will be no attempt at critical distance here. America might kill me before i get the chance.

Don't Call Us Dead by Danez Smith