Family Poetry

Growing up with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and a mostly absent father, Nikki Grimes found herself terrorized by babysitters, shunted from foster family to foster family, and preyed upon by those she trusted. At the age of six, she poured her pain onto a piece of paper late one night - and discovered the magic and impact of writing. For many years, Nikki's notebooks were her most enduing companions. In this accessible and inspiring memoir, Nikki shows how the power of those words helped her conquer the hazards - ordinary and extraordinary - of her life.

When the future of Grandeur nears the brink of collapse in the face of band rivalry, Tess finds to her chagrin that she must team up with Brandon in a desperate attempt to revive the company. As Tess and Brandon spend more time together, Tess begins to wonder if everything she thought she knew might not be so certain after all….

A poetic portrait of faith, futility, and the joy of this mortal life. In this astoundingly unique audiobook, best-selling author N. D. Wilson reminds each of us that to truly live, we must recognize that we are dying. Every second we create more of our past. Then, we must see the future. We stand in the now. God says create. Live. Choose. Shape the past. Etch your life in stone, and what you make will be forever.

Vulnerable, tender, acute, these are serious poems, brave poems, exploring with honesty the ambiguous moment between the rapture of youth and the grace of acceptance. A daughter tends to aging parents. A woman struggles with infertility—“What if, instead of carrying / a child, I am supposed to carry grief?”—and a body seized by pain and vertigo as well as ecstasy. A nation convulses: “Every song of this country / has an unsung third stanza, something brutal.” And still Limón shows us, as ever, the persistence of hunger, love, and joy, the dizzying fullness of our too-short lives.

The Perseverance is the remarkable debut book by British-Jamaican poet Raymond Antrobus. Ranging across history and continents, these poems operate in the spaces in between, their haunting lyrics creating new, hybrid territories. The Perseverance is a book of loss, contested language and praise, where elegies for the poet's father sit alongside meditations on the d/Deaf experience.

From Finnish saunas and soppy otters to grief, grandparents and Kellogg's anti-masturbation pants, Slug is a book which holds a mirror lovingly up to the world, past and present, through Hollie's driving, funny, hopeful poetry and prose. Slug is about the human condition: of birth and death and how we manage the possibilities in between.

In a powerfully intimate and non-traditional (or "new-fashioned") memoir, Kwame Alexander shares snapshots of a man learning how to love. He takes us through stories of his parents: from being awkward newlyweds in the sticky Chicago summer of 1967, to the sometimes-confusing ways they showed their love to each other, and for him. He explores his own relationships—his difficulties as a newly wedded, 22-year-old father, and the precariousness of his early marriage working in a jazz club with his second wife.

In What Lies Within by CBA best-selling author Karen Ball, something is missing from the life of the successful owner of Justice Construction Co. But Kyla Justice doesn’t realize what it is until she begins building a center for inner-city kids. She’s now undeterred by supply problems or gang opposition. She won’t be stopped by her boyfriend’s suggestion to sell her businessand marry him. And she certainly won’t be sidetracked by that disagreeable Rafael Murphy.

It is May 1634 when Jonathan and Elizabeth Pratt arrive in the Massachusetts Bay Colony from England. They are unaware of the beauty and dangers that they will encounter in this wilderness as they embark on their journey of faith.

Renowned for his inventive mind, ambitious play with language, and dexterity with a wide range of tones and styles, John Ashbery has been a major artistic figure in the cultural life of our time. Parallel Movement of the Hands gathers unpublished, book-length projects and long poems written between 1993 and 2007, along with one (as yet) undated work, to showcase Ashbery’s diverse and multifaceted artistic obsessions and sources, such as children’s literature, cliff-hanger cinema reels, silent films, and classical music variations by Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny.

Blythe Baird’s If My Body Could Speak is a celebration of girlhood and all of its struggles and triumphs. In poems that dig deep into sexuality, acceptance of the body, survival of trauma, and learning to love yourself in spite of everything telling you not to, Baird’s voice is a rich addition to her generation. Searing, soaring, and heartbreaking, If My Body Could Speak balances the softness of femininity with the sharpness that girls are forced to become.

This book is a wake-up call to those impacted by adoption and to those who interact with them. Adoption and Suicidality will speak to anyone with direct experience of adoption and suicide or suicidal ideation, plus anyone who wants to know how to better help adopted people (and others in the adoption constellation) who are struggling.

Run run run. That's what twelve-year-old Annie loves to do. When she's barefoot and running, she can hear her heart beating...Thump-THUMP, thump-THUMP. It's a rhythm that makes sense in a year when everything's shifting: Her mother is pregnant, her grandfather is forgetful, and her best friend, Max, is always moody. Everything is changing, just like the apple Annie's been assigned to draw a hundred times.

Poetry for every listener. Bibliophile has three sections. Poems about family fill "The Tie that Binds." Poetry about art is the theme of "A Thousand Words." The book ends with a section of humorous poems, "Flights of Fancy."

Phil Kaye’s debut collection is a stunning tribute to growing up, and all of the challenges and celebrations of the passing of time, as jagged as it may be. Kaye takes the listener on a journey from a complex but iridescent childhood, drawing them into adolescence, and finally on to adulthood. There are first kisses, lost friendships, hair blowing in the wind while driving the vastness of an empty road, and the author in the middle, trying to make sense of it all. Date & Time is a welcoming story, which freezes the calendar and allows us all to live in our best moments.

Intimate, moving, virtuosic, and hilarious, Tayi Tibble is one of the most exciting new voices in poetry today. In Poūkahangatus (pronounced “Pocahontas”), her debut volume, Tibble challenges a dazzling array of mythologies—Greek, Māori, feminist, kiwi—peeling them apart, respinning them in modern terms.

Rese Barrett and Lance Michelli have agreed to run her Sonoma B&B as partners. But Lance is still driven to unravel the mystery behind papers he found buried in the basement there: papers left by his grandfather, who built this house two generations ago. Now they have gone to Lance's family in New York to find some answers.

The first collection of poetry from Bunmi Laditan, best-selling author of Confessions of a Domestic Failure and creator of The Honest Toddler, capturing the honesty, rawness, sheer joy, and total madness of motherhood. With the compassion and wit that have made her a social media sensation among mothers around the world, Bunmi Laditan puts into evocative and relatable words what so many of us feel but can’t quite express.

A poetry collection about the beautiful and disorienting period of new motherhood, exploring an experience both otherworldly and very, very human.

Tears For My Father: Outlaw Thoughts & Poems explores not only Madsen's remarkable life and experiences in and out of Hollywood, but also his familial influences that have participated in crafting and shaping him, including thoughts on his father; his mother and the rumor that he was born without a left hand; ghosts, whiskey, and payback; Robert Mitchum, James Cagney, and "sensitive sons of bitches"; the mentality of actors and growing up to be a man; his first audition; drunken behavior; epic drinkers; and much, much more.