CLMP Rounds Up More Than 200 Small-Press Poetry Titles of 2020
In a useful, delightful year-end roundup, CLMP has gathered over 200 poetry collections published in 2020 by small literary publishers. Since that's a rather generous number, we'll focus on their list of debut poetry books, which include Lara Mimosa Montes's Thresholes (Coffee House) and Claire Meuschke's Upend (Noemi Press), both of which have seen some spotlight here at Harriet. Here's a few more to keep your eyes on:
A Brief History of Burning by Cait O’Kane
Belladonna* | August 2020
O’Kane’s debut poetry collection “discloses the moral crises of addiction, debt affliction, and an ascendant police state against communities of resistance in North Philadelphia and New York City.”Dears, Beloveds by Kevin Phan
Center for Literary Publishing/Colorado Review | November 2020
Phan’s debut collection of prose poems “offers a fine-grained meditation on grief—personal, familial, ecological, and political.”Loosen by Kyle Potvin
Hobblebush Books | December 2020
According to Linda Pastan, in this debut poetry collection “looks at the difficult world of sadness and pain and shows us with fine imagery… the beauty we often fail to see.”Oliver Reed by Hannah Regel
Montez Press | April 2020
Regel’s first full-length poetry collection is, according to Sam Riviere, “pitiless, discomforting poems that explore our own creatureliness with a deadly curiosity.”Suitor by Joshua Rivkin
Red Hen Press | September 2020
The poems in Rivkin’s debut collection “ask what it means to be a suitor in the fullest sense–to follow, to pursue, to chase the inexplicable hunger at the heart of desire.”Hotel Almighty by Sarah J. Sloat
Sarabande Books | September 2020
Sloat’s debut poetry collection, “visually arresting and utterly one-of-a-kind,” is a mixed-media book-length erasure of pages from Misery by Stephen King.A Nail the Evening Hangs On by Monika Sok
Copper Canyon Press | March 2020
In her debut poetry collection, Sok “illuminates the experiences of Cambodian diaspora and reflects on America’s role in escalating the genocide in Cambodia.
For full-length poetry collections and chapbooks, keep reading at CLMP.