BuzzFeed Features 15 Books by Queer Writers

As year-end lists start to roll in, we're grateful to Sarah Neilson at BuzzFeed for reminding us of 15 books of prose and poetry we just may have missed this year. We'll give you a glimpse at two poetry titles, by Ali Liebegott and Jake Skeets, and then let you head to BuzzFeed for the other 13 books:

The Summer of Dead Birds, Ali Liebegott (Feminist Press’s Amethyst Editions imprint)

Liebegott, a poet, has long been a pillar of the lesbian poetry scene, all the way back to the Sister Spit days, in addition to being a visual artist and TV writer. Her latest collection is a potent meditation on grief. Whether losing a person, pet, or relationship, the graceful and the ugly dovetail in these poems. Birds are delicate, majestic, elegant, and reckless — easily broken by this world and yet soar high above it. They serve as effective symbols and metaphor for losses small and large.

Eye Bottle Dark With a Mouthful of Flowers, Jake Skeets (Milkweed Editions)

The cover of this debut poetry collection from Skeets, a Diné poet, is striking: a photograph of an indigenous man against a stark white background, shirt half untucked, a few dollar bills folded into his hand, staring into the camera with eyes that are “bottle dark.” The photograph is called “Drifter.” Skeets wrote about this photograph, which is of his uncle who died shortly after it was taken, and about how it informed not only the title poem but the entire collection. This context isn’t necessary to fall into and be swept away by Skeets’s crackling poems, but it does add more depth to them. The poems here are as visually gripping as they are stunning to read. They are a challenge to colonialist language and linguistic white supremacy; they are full of joy and fear, with overwhelming layers and gaping omissions that say just as much. Full of landscape imagery, queer love intimacy, violence, and flowers, this is an arresting collection from a poet worth watching.

Read on here!