Danez Smith – författare

Publishers Weekly''s Top Ten Fall 2024 Poetry BooksBefore Langston Hughes and his literary prowess became synonymous with American poetry, he was an eighteen-year-old on a train to Mexico City, seeking funds to pursue his passion. His early poems, beloved verses like "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," were written without formal training, often on the back of napkins and envelopes, and were inspired by the sights and sounds of Black working-class people he encountered in his early life.Blues in Stereo is a posthumous collection of these early works, in which we see Langston Hughes like we''ve never seen him before. In the intimate pages of his handwritten journals, you will travel with Hughes outside of Harlem as he ventures to the American South and Mexico, sails through the Caribbean, and becomes the only Harlem renaissance poet to visit Africa. He celebrates love as a tool of liberation in his poems and journal entries. His songs included showcase musicality of verse poetry. And the book even includes a play he co-wrote with Duke Ellington with a full score that experiments with rhythm and structure.Blues in Stereo portrays a young man coming of age in a changing world. Page by page, a young, fresh-faced Hughes contends with matters beyond his years with raw talent. National Book Award nominated poet Danez Smith offers their insight and notes on themes, challenges, and obsessions that Hughes early work contains. Blues in Stereo foreshadows a master poet that will go on to define literature for centuries to come.

Brought to you by Penguin.A searing new collection from the Forward Prize-winning American poet about the year that the world’s gaze turned to Minneapolis – Smith''s own home.Written after two years of artistic silence, during which the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Minneapolis became the epicentre of protest following the murder of George Floyd, Bluff is Danez Smith’s powerful reckoning with their role and responsibility as a poet and with their hometown. This is a book of awakening out of violence, guilt, shame and critical pessimism to imagine how we can strive towards a new existence in a world that seems to be dissolving into desolate futures.Smith brings a startling urgency to these poems, their questions demanding a new language, a deep self-scrutiny and virtuosic textual shapes. A series of ars poetica gives way to ‘anti poetica’ and ‘ars america’ to implicate poetry’s collusions with unchecked capitalism. A brilliant long poem maps the history of Minneapolis-Saint Paul’s vibrant Rondo neighbourhood before and after officials decided to run an interstate directly through it.Bluff is a manifesto about artistic resilience when the places we most love – those given and made – are burning. In this collection, Smith turns to honesty, hope, rage and imagination to envision futures that seem possible.‘A writer who never loses their way’ New York Times© Danez Smith 2024 (P) Penguin Audio 2024

FINALIST FOR THE 2025 PULITZER PRIZE FOR POETRYFINALIST FOR THE 2024 NAACP IMAGE AWARD FOR POETRYFINALIST FOR THE 2025 ANISFIELD-WOLF BOOK AWARD FOR POETRYWINNER OF THE 2025 MINNESOTA BOOK AWARD FOR POETRYWritten after two years of artistic silence, during which the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Minneapolis became the epicenter of protest following the murder of George Floyd, Bluff is Danez Smith’s powerful reckoning with their role and responsibility as a poet and with their hometown of the Twin Cities. This is a book of awakening out of violence, guilt, shame, and critical pessimism to wonder and imagine how we can strive toward a new existence in a world that seems to be dissolving into desolate futures. Smith brings a startling urgency to these poems, their questions demanding a new language, a deep self-scrutiny, and virtuosic textual shapes. A series of ars poetica gives way to “anti poetica” and “ars america” to implicate poetry’s collusions with unchecked capitalism. A photographic collage accrues across a sequence to make clear the consequences of America''s acceptance of mass shootings. A brilliant long poem—part map, part annotation, part visual argument—offers the history of Saint Paul’s vibrant Rondo neighborhood before and after officials decided to run an interstate directly through it.Bluff is a kind of manifesto about artistic resilience, even when time and will can seem fleeting, when the places we most love—those given and made—are burning. In this soaring collection, Smith turns to honesty, hope, rage, and imagination to envision futures that seem possible.