Danez Smith

"& colin kaepernick is my president, who kneels on the airbent toward a branch, throwing apples down to the children & vets& rihanna is my president, walking out of global summitswith wine glass in hand, our taxes returned in goldto dust our faces into coins& my mama is my president, her grace stuntson amazing, brown hands breaking brown bread overmouths of the hungry until there are none unfed & my grandma is my president & her cabinet is her cabinetcause she knows to trust what the pan knowshow the skillet wins the war" -from 'my president'Danez Smith is our President. A mighty anthem about the saving grace of friendship, Danez Smith's highly anticipated collection Homie is rooted in their search for joy and intimacy in a time where both are scarce. In poems of rare power and generosity, Smith acknowledges that in a country overrun by violence, xenophobia and disparity, and in a body defined by race, queerness, and diagnosis, it can be hard to survive, even harder to remember reasons for living. But then the phone lights up, or a shout comes up to the window, and family - blood and chosen - arrives with just the right food and some redemption. Part friendship diary, part bright elegy, part war cry, Homie is written for friends: for Danez's friends, for yours.

*WINNER OF THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION 2018* *A Finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry 2017* *A Financial Times and Telegraph Book of the Year 2018* Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a ground-breaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don’t Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality – the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood – and an HIV-positive diagnosis. ‘Some of us are killed / in pieces,’ Smith writes, ‘some of us all at once.’ Don’t Call Us Dead is an astonishing and ambitious collection, one that confronts, praises, and rebukes an America where every day is too often a funeral and not often enough a miracle.