The Best New Poets You May Not Have Heard Of

Kelly is the author of Bestiary, which won the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the 2017 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for poetry, and the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and in other publications.

Her third poetry collection, The Renunciations, is poignant, personal, and lyrical. She’s now one of my favorite poets. Here are stunning verses from the poem “The moon rose over the bay. I had a lot of feelings.”:

The home I’ve been making inside myself started

with a razing, a brush clearing, the thorn and nettle,

the blackberry bush falling under the bush hog…

…I stood in the mud field

and called it a pasture. Stood with a needle in my mouth

and called it a song. Everything rushed past my small ears:

whir in the leaves, whir in the wing and the wood. About time

to get a hammer, I thought. About time to get a nail and saw.

Yousaf is an emerging poet from New Jersey. He has already published three poetry collections: Euphoria, Sincerely, and Prayers of My Youth.

His poems are mostly autobiographical and confessional in nature; they are also very accessible. Here’s “Room for Improvements” from Prayers of My Youth:

There are gardens in you

which speak to me.

Wrapping their stems around my ankles,

sharing their growth — their sustenance.

The water draining down my pores,

the dirt tenderly caressing my skin.

The sun kissing the hair that flows down my forehead.

In your gardens your flowers do not whither

in my presence.

But accept, and open a path for me

to come and go as I please.

Duarte-Gray is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University. Her poems have appeared in The Colorado Review, Bat City Review, The South Carolina Review, december magazine, and elsewhere.

Her debut poetry collection, Even Shorn, got a starred review from Publishers Weekly. I wish it were a little bit longer, because at 98 pages, I find myself wanting more. Here are my favorite lines from the poem titled “Complaint” in Even Shorn:

what are bones that they can feel

be vexed for stillness

as the wind prepares

to choose the word most carefully

for rain the silty dread

when rocks will slither

down the mountain in a saffron

scarf the rags of hillsides pool

into a pillow for my dreaming there is comfort

to be taken when two dreads are parted

should I drown my couch in tears

Wong is a poet based in Hong Kong. He is the winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry in 2016 for Crevasse.

In his second collection titled Besiege Me, he writes about the friction between China and Hong Kong. In an interview with Lambda Literary, Wong said that Besiege Me was born out of personal and political events in his life, mainly the recent happenings in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and also about his family. Here’s a thought-provoking poem titled “Apology to a Besieged City” from said collection:

If I scattered dug-out bricks to stop the water cannons.

If I swung teargas canisters back to the cops with a squash racket.

If I wasn’t a sheep in a milder herd.

If toddlers weren’t taught to draw a unicorn — then remove its horn, call it a horse.

If elders weren’t trained as gamecocks, plucking each other’s eyes with berserk beaks.

If all windows were taken away so no one would see if there’s a cloud

over the world, another sun behind the cloud.

If you weren’t still resisting the anti-bliss of the double rainbow.

If fire didn’t become the unit of currency for a briefness.

If I didn’t empty my wallet.

If I didn’t dare the flames to groom the hours themselves.

Candrilli is recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award in poetry. They have written noteworthy poetry collections such as What Runs Over, 2017 finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in the transgender poetry category; and All the Gay Saints, winner of the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Their third poetry book is Water I Won’t Touch, which is a very personal work.

Here are my favorite verses from the poem “Elegy for the Undead” from All the Gay Saints:

…Young people die

because they are too alive.

This is proven algorithm.

This is breaststroke

with a concaved lung.

There is a lesson

to be learned

from those that refuse

to go gently. I’ve learned

to keep my tongue

wet, and soft,

and gentle.

Akbar is an Iranian American poet. His works have appeared in publications like The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The New York Times Magazine. He mostly writes about addiction.

He is the recipient of Pushcart and Lucille Medwick Memorial awards. Among his works are Portrait of the Alcoholic, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, and Pilgrim Bell. Here are my favorite lines from the poem “Pilgrim Bell,” off the collection of the same title:

How long can you speak.

Without inhaling. How long.

Can you inhale without.

Bursting apart. History is wagging…

…Today I answer only.

To my war name. Wise.

Salt. I can make.

A stone float off into.

The sky. I can make.

A whole family.

Disappear. I know.

So many people.

Have been awful to you.

I’ve given each one.

A number. When you’re ready.

I will ask you to draw me.

Their hands.

Victor has been writing poetry for some time now. Among her best collections are Natural Subjects, winner of the Bob Kaufman Award; Kith, a book of verse, prose memoir, lyric essay and visual objects; and Things to Do With Your Mouth.

She has been a Mark Diamond Research Fellow at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Her tenth poetry collection titled Curb received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Here’s “Settlement:”

Settlers, over the land, over the sea

over the tile, over the stone floors

settlers over the furs, over the pinewood planks

of the house settled, the houses settled into the ground

the houses so buried; settling

pulling life like splinters

from the toboggans & caravans pulling cargo

settled out of suitcases, settled down

we settled in & so settled we

into our ways & with those ways did we settle

for this emptying of history

for this sternum rent in two

for this conscience as quiet

as the snap of a wishbone

sucked white.

Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He mostly writes poems about identity and politics. His debut poetry collection titled Counting Descent was released in 2017. Though it was published a while back, it gained traction during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

Smith won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Here’s an excerpt from “what the fire hydrant said to the black boy” from Counting Descent:

…they say we both stay posted on corners

they say we both come with warnings

for others not to stand too close

but we both mind our own business

until people use us for things

we were never meant for

do you know what it means

for your existence to be defined

by someone else’s intentions?

a burning home

a burning cross

putting a boy against the wall

so the dogs

have an easier time

of course you know

a prison cell

an empty gun

a mourning mother of a boy who thought

sending him to that school across town

would mean he’d

have an easier time

but when they open us

spilling

until there’s nothing left inside

everyone stands around

to watch.

Lanuza is a writer from the Philippines. Though she is mostly known in the romance genre, she also writes poetry. Her self-published collection The Last Time I’ll Write About You was picked up and rereleased by independent publisher Andrews McMeel Publishing. Her other poetry titles are This is How It Starts and You Are Here.

Lanuza’s fourth poetry book is I Must Belong Somewhere: Poetry and Prose, in which she contemplates a lot of subjects such as mental health, bullying, and sexism, among others. The poems from the said collection appear to be untitled.

Here’s an excerpt from the 22^nd entry:

How do you carry

the guilt of leaving

for a moment

for yourself?

…You hold on and pull them up,

but the weight, even for you,

is too much.

You strain your muscles—

no, don’t let go.

You get that resigned look,

and you know.

They will let you go—

and soon.

Matejka is the first African American to be a Poet Laureate in Indiana since 1985; he held that title from 2018 to 2019. He mostly writes about race and identity.

Among his poetry collections are The Devil’s Garden; Mixology; The Big Smoke, a finalist for the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize; and Map to the Stars. His fifth collection is Somebody Else Sold the World.

Here’s an excerpt from “Where to Begin” in Somebody Else Sold the World:

…my chest is cresting inside its loosed-limb protest.

There’s my cold-pressed undress over there, adjacent

to anything practical. I can’t wait to lick all of it

off of you with my mediocre metaphors. Just like

yesterday’s surprises, it’s past my time to shine.

Meanwhile, Friends in other countries have been out

in their damp streets for months echoing in concision.

They’ve bundled the back-in-the-days at the end

of a stick, then over one shoulder for the prolonged

procession. & then there’s us, spinning in place

like the last platinum record in the stack. & then

there’s us, caught up in America’s slacking atrium.