Family Poetry

Blood Aside I Take It Personal is a poem that details the trials and tribulations a person experiences while trying to start over in life after the betrayal of friends and family.

Am I My Mother's Child is a poem about a daughter questioning her maternal lineage while experiencing cruelty from mother.

Carole and Jeffery Boston Weatherford’s ancestors are among the founders of Maryland. Their family history there extends more than three hundred years, but as with the genealogical searches of many African Americans with roots in slavery, their family tree can only be traced back five generations before going dark. And so from scraps of history, Carole and Jeffery have conjured the voices of their kin, creating an often painful but ultimately empowering story of who their people were in a breathtaking book that is at once deeply personal yet all too universal.

During a visit to her grandma's house, a young girl discovers a box of poems in the attic - poems written by her mother when she was growing up. Her mother's family often moved around the United States and the world because her father was in the air force. Over the years her mother used poetry to record her experiences in the many places the family lived. Reading the poems and sharing those experiences through her mother's eyes, the young girl feels closer to her mother than ever before.

When Lonnie Collins Motion was seven years old, his life changed forever. Now Lonnie is eleven and his life is about to change again. His teacher, Ms. Marcus, is showing him ways to put his jumbled feelings on paper. And suddenly, Lonnie has a whole new way to tell the world about his life, his friends, his little sister, Lili, and even his foster mom, Miss Edna, who started out crabby but isn’t so bad after all. Award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson’s lyrical voice captures Lonnie’s thoughtful perspectives of the world and his determination to one day put a family together again.

With his dazzling ability to set words spinning, Amit Majmudar brings us poems that sharpen both wit and knives as he examines our "life in solitary". Equally engaged with human history and the human heart, Majmudar transfigures identity from a locus of captivity to the open field of his liberation....

A child born into a dysfunctional family is trying to find out how she fits into the world, by watching the mistakes of others; she has to learn to love the skin she is in, while not letting her family define who she is capable of becoming. This poetry will pierce your soul and the images will remain with you for years to come. This book was written to help all those who feel they've been left behind. There is hope.

Reflections on life, family, memories, and the world around us. On mental health, heartbreak, and stories that have inspired so many. These poems bare the soul of the author. What you take from them, and how you perceive them, is entirely up to you.

Court recueil de courts poèmes qui font sourire, parfois réfléchir et toujours rappeler l'enfance au présent.

This debut poetry collection takes a slanted view at five aspects of being human: life, love, loss, longing, and laughter. Pain and struggle and suffering is a given in life — for some more than others. Joy is inseparable from sorrow and pain; joy finds its footing in the latter. Each day, each morning, we have a choice to make: misery or joy. Joy is the better option.

The Dry Valley encapsulates one woman’s relationship with herself, her alcoholic spouse, and the world, in three different Saskatchewan landscapes. The poems offer a fascinating interplay between mindful explorations of self and immersions in the challenging complexities of interpersonal relationships, social issues, and meaningful engagement with the environment.

A lively and imaginative debut, Neoteny explores blindness, family, and birdsong. In these poems, Emily K. Michael meditates on literary and personal heroes like Jo March, her beloved grandmother, and her guide dog. This collection is rich with treasures from childhood - the honey-colored piano Michael played, the fig tree in her front yard, and the trays of fresh mint drying on her grandmother's table.

Some needs are special, they’re not like the rest. They may leave a scar upon your chest. You may look different, have a tube, a scar. But all these things are not who you are. Even though she has a rare syndrome and some major health issues, Lucy is so much more than her “special needs”. Lucy wants you to know that in so many ways she is just like you - special indeed! Lucy’s story is a powerful voice for children with special needs, disabilities, and illnesses.

Concrete Kids is an exploration of love and loss, melody and bloodshed. Musician, playwright, and educator Amyra León takes us on a poetic journey through her childhood in Harlem, as she navigates the intricacies of foster care, mourning, self-love, and resilience. In her signature free-verse style, she invites us all to dream with abandon - and to recognize the privilege it is to dream at all.

Llama Llama's tooth is wiggling! Is it time for his first tooth to come out? He's excited, but anxious. Who is this tooth fairy everyone talks about? Mama Llama reassures him; the tooth will come out when it's good and ready. But no one is ready for what happens next.... Suddenly, the tooth is GONE! Where did it go? And will the tooth fairy come at all, now? Anna Dewdney's fun rhyme is full of humor and comfort, and of course, a very happy ending.

The poet's art is revealed in stages in this "making-of" book, where we watch as poems take shape - first as dreams or memories, then as drafts, and finally as completed works set loose on the world. In the long poem "Must We Mean What We Say", a woman reader narrates in prose the circumstances behind poems and snippets of poems she receives in letters from a stranger. Who made up whom?

In her first book, happy-go-lucky YouTuber and Instagrammer Emma Conway explores motherhood in all its glory through the medium of hilarious and uplifting poetry. A mum to two young humans aged seven and nine, she revisits the days of no sleep, potty training and toddler tantrums; dives deep into first days of school, sibling bickering and watching your babies grow into little people; and writes frankly about life after having kids, embracing the mum bod and giving zero sods.

Full of brilliant wit, dynamic energy, and a heavy dose of reality, Love Poems for Married People takes the poetic form, turns it upside-down, and leaves it in the dishwasher to dry. Inspired by one of the most shared New Yorker pieces of all time, this collection captures the reality of life once the spark of a relationship has settled - and hilariously so. With brand new pieces that cover all areas of married life, Kenney's wry observations and sharp humor remind us exactly what it's like to spend the rest of your life with the person you love.

Come experience the non-stop excitement of having to keep up with your energy-filled grandpa while he’s in town visiting you on vacation. He’s going to make each day the best day you have ever had. There’s not a minute to waste, because you are about to pack an entire summer of fun into a week. There’s no way of knowing just what all can happen when grandpa gets going.

In We Inherit What the Fires Left, award-winning poet William Evans embarks on a powerful new collection that explores the lived experience of race in the American suburbs and what dreams and injuries are passed from generation to generation. Fall under the spell of Evans' boldly intimate, wise, and emotionally candid voice in these urgent, electrifying poems. This eloquent collection explores not only what these inheritances are composed of, but what price the bearer must pay for such legacies, and the costly tolls exacted on both body and spirit.