Hooray for poets and poetry! Arthur Sze, current U.S. Poet Laureate, has a book of poetry translations out this week called “Transient Worlds: On Translating Poetry” (2026), which takes readers through 1,500 years of world poetry. The Washington State Poet Laureate is Derek Sheffield, whose most recent poetry book is “Not for Luck” (2021), and here in Clark County, our Poet Laureate is Susan Dingle, whose most recent book of poems is “In Pilgrim Drag” (2020). The most recent Pulitzer Prize for Poetry was given to Marie Howe for her book “New and Selected Poems” (2024).
If you’d like to add more poetry to your life, sign up with the Poetry Foundation (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/newsletter) or poets.org (https://poets.org/poem-a-day) for poem-a-day newsletters. Knopf Poetry (https://sites.prh.com/knopf-poem-a-day) has one also, but only during April.
There are so many wonderful poets and poems that finding favorites is truly a personal choice. Instead of listing award-winners - and there are many poetry awards - here is a list of recent poetry collections related to social conditions.
Explores Black and American identities within an ecological framework:
Describes Black Americans’ traditions, tragedies and triumphs:
A posthumous collection addressing the upheaval of our current times:
Anthology written by 30 Palestinian poets living in the Gaza Strip
This book-length poem looks at diaspora and identity
36 Ways of Writing A Vietnamese Poem
Artistic resilience in the wake of COVID-19 and a rapidly changing world:
Anthology of essays, poems and more by twenty Native writers:
Illuminates finding joy in moments of difficulty:
Describes today’s crises and the losses they represent through everyday objects:
Lyrical odes to the experiences of Salvadoran immigrants and their resilience:
Essays, poems and artwork by migrants, refugees and Dreamers:
The impact of three landmark moments in recent American history on racial injustice:
And in closing: if books of poems you seek to find, keep the library in mind. Joyful reading!
– Beth Wood is a senior collection development librarian for Fort Vancouver Regional Libraries. Email her at readingforfun@fvrl.org.
New at the Library
This is just a small sampling of the many new titles added each week to the Fort Vancouver Regional Library District collection. Visit the district’s 15 locations, our website at www.fvrl.org, or call (360) 906-5000 to reserve titles or find additional listings.
FICTION
Suspicion
Inharmonious
The Midnight Muse
NONFICTION
The Promise of A Nation
Duty, Honor, Country, and Life
On the Record
CHILDREN
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