Black, Queer, Trans, and Millennial:  A New Generation of American Poetry: Part II

Author: Walter Holland

April 30, 2023

As I previously mentioned, Cave Canem and the Lambda Literary organization helped mentor many of these Black, Queer, Trans, and Millennial poets. These poets were also shaped by the growth in MFA writing programs and the rise in both print and online literary zines, as well as small presses. The latter development quickly expanded opportunities for POC queer and trans poets to be read, discussed, and studied. Of course, this Millennial generation of queer POC poets had also been fostered by the advent of many POC community-based writing collectives. These groups, peer-driven or public, were aided by fellowship and award programs, all communities that became more diversified and allied with minority poets. Institutions such as the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the McKnight Foundation,  the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship, as well as award programs such as Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Lambda Literary Awards, and the Whiting Foundation Prize, began to champion more diverse American writers more actively. 

This wave of POC queer-identified or trans poets was further helped by presses such as Alice James Books, Boa Editions, Ltd., Coffee House Press, Copper Canyon Press, Graywolf Press, Indolent Books, Nightboat Books, Sibling Rivalry Press, Noemi Press, and The Song Cave among others.

Black Queer and trans poets found themselves represented in the anthology Nepantla: An Anthology, edited by Christopher  “Loma” Soto (Nightboat Books, 2018). Black Queer Millennial poets also appeared in the fascinating 2015 literary collection The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, edited by Kevin Coval, Qurayshi Ali Lansana, and Nate Marshall (Haymarket Books, 2015). 

More and more, these poets spent their younger academic years in undergraduate/graduate MFA writing programs or with Cave Canem fellowships in workshops, attending Lambda Literary retreats, and participating in formal and informal community collectives. Black, Queer, Trans, and Millennial poets began to forge networks and establish a more visible presence on the American Poetry scene, garnering deserved literary attention. 

Poets Kemi Alabi, Derrick Austin, Nikky Finney, francine j. harris, Luther Hughes, Brionne Janae, Taylor Johnson, Saeed Jones, Donika Kelly, Rickey Laurentis, Jasmine Mans, Dawn Lundy Martin, Tawanda Malalu, Xandria Phillips, Justin Phillip Reed, Danez Smith, Courtney Faye Taylor, and Phillip B. Williams are just some of this exciting new school of Black and queer voices. More and more, these poets spent their younger academic years in undergraduate/graduate MFA writing programs or with Cave Canem fellowships in workshops, attending Lambda Literary retreats, and participating in formal and informal community collectives. Black, Queer, Trans, and Millennial poets began to forge networks and establish a more visible presence on the American Poetry scene, garnering deserved literary attention. 

By no means exhaustive, I did wish to cite many notable titles from these writers of the past several decades: Dawn Lundy Martin’s A Gathering of Matter/A Matter of Gathering (University of Georgia Press,2007), which took the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award; Head Off & Split by Nikky Finney   (Northwestern University Press, 2011), winner of many awards including the National Book Award for Poetry; Rickey Laurentiis’ Boy With Thorn (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), winner of the 2014 Cave Canem Poetry Prize; Donika Kelly’s Bestiary (Graywolf, 2016), winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize in 2015 and long-listed for the 2016 National Book Award, as well as her The Runcinations (Graywolf, 2021), winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards in 2022.

 This impressive record of titles continues with: Justin Phillip Reed’s Indecency (Coffee House Press, 2018),winner of the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry, followed by Reed’s The Malevolent Volume (Coffee House Press, 2020), which won the 2021 CLMP Firecracker Award and was a 2021 finalist for the Lambda Literary Award; Xandria Phillips’ Hull (Nightboat Books, 2019), winner of the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry; Cyrée Jarelle Johnson’s Slingshot (Nightboat Books, 2019), winner of the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry; francine j. harris’ here is the sweet hand (FSG, 2020),  winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award; Derrick Austin’s Tenderness (BOA Editions, 2021), which took The Isabella Gardner Poetry Award in 2020; and Brionne Janae’s Blessed Are The Peacemakers (Northwestern University Press, 2022), which won the 2020 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, and Concentrate (Graywolf, 2022), written by Courtney Faye Taylor and winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize as well as National Poetry Series finalist. 

To my mind, perhaps the most seminal poets of this Black Queer Millennial generation are Kemi Alabi, francine j. harris, Taylor Johnson, Saeed Jones, Justin Phillip Reed, Danez Smith, and Phillip B. Williams. Newcomer Kemi Alabi’s Against Heaven (Graywolf Press, 2022), which received the 2021 Academy of American Poets First Book Award, is an exciting and promising collection filled with unique, striking, and highly original language experimentative forms. 

francine j. harris manages a poetry that defies the language of standard American English and smooth literary comportment; instead, she gives us the conversational percussive maneuvers of a language full of familiar voices and with a vital flare of spontaneous invention. 

Taylor Johnson, whose mysterious and beautiful Inheritance from Alice James Books in 2020, took the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America in 2021 and was named a best poetry book of 2020 by The New York Times. Johnson is a poet of complex introspection. To some degree, he reinvented the memory poem format by reconstructing a non-binary childhood written in language as complex and layered as his developing identity.