2024 Books in Review
A sampling of our 2024 book reviews.
BY The Editors
This year, the Poetry Foundation published nearly 90 short form book reviews by a team of dedicated reviewers, with an emphasis on debut collections, poetry in translation, and works by writers from underrepresented backgrounds, most published by small and independent presses. Among the books we covered are highly acclaimed collections like Diane Seuss's Modern Poetry, a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry, and Daniel Borzutsky's The Murmuring Grief of the Americas, a finalist for the 2024 Chicago Review of Books CHIRBy Award for Poetry; debut collections like 2000 Blacks by the Nigerian poet Ajibola Tolase and The Colour of Time by the Irish poet Úna Ní Cheallaigh; and works in translation from more than a dozen languages, including Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Kurdish, Persian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. While the Foundation has sunsetted short form book reviews for now, we look forward to continuing to highlight new books in the year ahead in other formats. We hope you enjoy the sampling below, and encourage you to explore our site for additional books coverage.
Happy holidays. And happy reading.
— The Editors
Debut Poetry Collections
The Colour of Time by Úna Ní Cheallaigh
Coachella Elegy by Christian Gullette
American Inmate by Justin Rovillos Monson
Poetry in Translation
Sidetracks by Bei Dao, translated from the Chinese by Jeffrey Yang
Where Not to Be Born by Safaa Fathy, translated from the Arabic by Rawad Z. Wehebe
Is it Poetry? by Toshiko Hirata, translated from the Japanese by Spencer Thurlow and Eric E. Hyett
O by Judith Kiros, translated from the Swedish by Kira Josefsson
Refugee Number 33,333 by Farhad Pirbal, translated from the Kurdish by Shook
Hopscotch by Fatemeh Shams, translated from the Persian by Armen Davoudian
Other Reviews of 2024 Notable Books
The Murmuring Grief of the Americas by Daniel Borzutsky
Instructions for the Lovers by Dawn Lundy Martin
I Don't Want to Be Understood by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza
The Naming of Names by Shash Trevett
The editorial staff of the Poetry Foundation. See the Poetry Foundation staff list and editorial team masthead.