Weekend Writing: Poetry Collections to Read in 2019

If you are a poetry lover, like me, it's time to clear some space on your bookcase for new poetry collections being released in 2019. From one fan to another, these collections are well worth the wait. Poets are writing about the world around us. They're writing about real, raw emotions, unique thoughts and reflections, and the evolving cultures we witness every day. Poets have thoughts and words to share, so it's time to read their work and listen to what they have to say.

Below are five poetry collections you can soon add to your "to be read" list. You won't want to miss these beautiful works.

1. "The Twenty-Ninth Year" - Hala Alyan 

Hala Alyan's "The Twenty-Ninth Year"
(photo/Amazon.com).

The Twenty-Ninth Year is Hala Alyan's latest poetry collection. The award-winning Palestinian-American poet, author, and clinical psychologist is also the author of Salt Houses, as well as other collections. Her poetry has been published in The Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, and others. Her poetry covers the many aspects of identity and the effects of often feeling displaced, especially as an immigrant.

The Twenty-Ninth Year discusses the year of transformation and upheaval you often experience in your twenty-ninth year--your final year before entering your thirties. The poems are a catalog of heartache, loneliness, love, and joy. Alyan's writing incorporates wit, metaphors, and powerful imagery to be deeply intimate and truthful with readers. The poet's latest collection dramatizes the long journey toward home, where Alyan searches for safety and who she will be next.

Be sure to buy The Twenty-Ninth Year, now available.

(photo/HELLO YELLOW ROOM)

2. "The Octopus Museum" - Brenda Shaughnessy 

Brenda Shaughnessy's "The Octopus Museum"
(photo/Penguin Random House).

Brenda Shaughnessy's The Octopus Museum is one of the most highly-anticipated poetry collections of 2019. Shaughnessy is the author of four previous collections (So Much Synth, Our Andromeda, and others), and she has been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Everyone is excited about her newest collection, which is already praised for the poet's complete honesty.

The Octopus Museum is a collection of the fears mothers have for their children (car accidents, falling from a tree, school shootings, etc.), and she reflects on the potential of future fears we can't even anticipate. Shaughnessy's heartbreaking, terrified poems are a battle cry of a woman who wants the world to remain just as it is--the world she loves--and the realization that it won't.

Keep your eyes out for The Octopus Museum, available on March 19.

3. "Only As the Day Is Long" - Dorianne Laux 

Dorianne Laux's "Only As the Day Is Long"
(photo/Amazon.com).

Dorianne Laux is the author of many collections, including What We Carry, Smoke, Facts About The Moon, and others. Her newest collection, Only As the Day Is Long, is already praised as another splendid collection by a poet who is never afraid to cradle beauty and darkness together in a poem.

Only As the Day Is Long is a collection of previous writing (compiled from previously-published collections) and 20 new poems to present an astonishing, confident, and daring body of work. The award-winning poet (a former National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry nominee) is known for her "enormous precision and beauty." The new poems in the collection are an ode to Laux's mother, who grew up during the Great Depression. Exploring experiences of healing, survival, love, and celebration, Laux's latest collection shows the poet is nowhere near finished writing poems straight from her heart.

Grab Only As the Day Is Long, now available.

4. "Days & Days" - Michael Dickman 

Michael Dickman's "Days & Days"
(photo/Amazon.com).

Michael Dickman has accomplished many incredible feats during his still-young writing career. A professor at Princeton University, his writing has been featured in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Narrative Magazine, and others. Nominated for the Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Poetry (for his previous collections, including Brother, Green Migraine, and others), Dickman has returned with a new collection, Days & Days. 

The poetry collection is an exhilarating, far-ranging perspective of days and how we live in the 21st century. Poems discuss parenthood, childhood, natural habitats, romantic love, graffiti culture, and more. How do you spend your days? How do we spend our days, as a society? Dickman's image-driven poetry is brutally honest and offers a strange beauty of the levels we see each other on a daily basis.

Look for Days & Days, available on March 19.

5. "Exiles of Eden" - Ladan Osman 

Ladan Osman's newest collection, Exiles of Eden, is a brilliant follow-up of her 2015 debut collection, The Kitchen-Dweller's Testimony. The poet is known for centering her poetry on her Somali and Muslim heritage, and her newest collection is no different.

Exiles of Eden reviews the origin stories of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, exploring their displacement and alienation. Steeped in her Somali tradition, Osman's experimental poems give voice to the experiences and shared traumas between individuals who have felt displaced over multiple generations. Osman makes the startling realization that once you are sent out of Eden, you can never go back.

Look for Exiles of Eden, available on May 7.

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Of course, there are so many more beautiful poetry collections forthcoming in 2019, and I couldn't be more excited. It's a beautiful time to be a poet. We write because we have something to say--whether it's about culture, life, politics, love, history, peace, or beauty. There's always a reason to write and I'm excited to read what these poets have to say.

Read on.

-KJL-