Don't Call Us Dead

<p><b>*WINNER OF THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION 2018*</b><br><b>*A Finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry 2017*</b><br><br><b>*A <i>Financial Times</i> and <i>Telegraph</i> Book of the Year 2018*<br><br>&#145;[Smith&#146;s] poems are enriched to the point of volatility but they pay out often in sudden joy&#146; <i>The New Yorker </i><br><br></b>Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a ground-breaking force celebrated for deft lyrics urgent subjects and performative power. <i>Don&#146;t Call Us Dead</i> opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police a place where suspicion violence and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety love and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire mortality &#150; the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood &#150; and an HIV-positive diagnosis. <br><br>&#145;Some of us are killed / in pieces&#146; Smith writes &#145;some of us all at once.&#146; <i>Don&#146;t Call Us Dead</i> is an astonishing and ambitious collection one that confronts praises and rebukes an America where every day is too often a funeral and not often enough a miracle.</p>