April 2026 Roundup
DeeSoul's reading and recommendations from April 2026
Hellooooooo poets of the internet! When I put out the March round-up, I (perhaps too eagerly) expressed gratitude for being out of “that dreadful snowy season.” However, here I am, still pulling out my coat because summer can’t decide how soon it wants to arrive. I suppose for now I’ll have to settle for warm thoughts while the Californian in me yearns for warm weather!
In case you missed it: Earlier this month, I had a terrific conversation with Alison C. Rollins discussing her newest book, Black Bell. And what good timing, because Rollins was just awarded a Whiting Award! This past Monday, I also dropped an episode with my friend Jonny Teklit talking about the poetics of joy. Both of these writers are also incredible thinkers, so I hope you’ll spend some time with them on the podcast.
Keep reading below for some April highlights, and hey — thanks for being here :)
What I’ve Read This Month
1) The Dead Don’t Need Reminding by Julian Randall
Rating: ★★★★★
Genre: Memoir
"It might sound ridiculous, but part of being Black is that you're game for any haunting the nation can dream up.”
- pg. 39, "The Bojack Horseman Story"
This memoir is what you get when you embark on the long journey of tracing the lineage of your loneliness, when what you're running from chases you back to where you began. Each essay in this memoir maps a new beginning or a delayed ending, showing us how often we reinvent ourselves to stay alive. Randall's lyricism & storytelling kept me engaged the whole read, carried me through Mississippi nights and days spent searching for the past that clarifies the future.
2) The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story
Rating: ★★★ ★
Genre: History (Anthology)
If Morgan Parker's You Get What You Pay For: Essays is an account of our modern day reckoning with the boat that brought us here, this project provides a road map back to that boat 400 years ago. As one reads this collection, one remembers that this nation's development was bit just happenstance; rather, it was the work of decades of policy that couldn't decide how much of a person Black people were, a nation that prides itself on the idea of freedom but has not yet actualized a freedom that applies to all.
New Poems in the Catalog
From Poem-a-Day
“Dream Variations” | Langston Hughes, 1994
“This Is Not a Small Voice” | Sonia Sanchez, 2018
“Making History” | Marilyn Nelson, 2016
“Imagine” | Kamilah Aisha Moon, 2014
“Midnight Air in Louisville” | Afaa Michael Weaver 2018
Work to Look Out For
Stegner Fellow Hieu Minh Nguyen’s third collection, Staying Still, is forthcoming from Tin House in September 2026. The book “ face[s] head-on the rejections, grief, and violence we fear in fractured family dynamics, love, and desire as we search for our place in this world.”
Poet Talk host Sanna Wani’s second collection, Lantern, is forthcoming from House of Anansi Press in September 2026. This collection “explores how we fall in love and make a home” and is “a guide for living in the aftermath of familial rifts, crises of faith, political struggle, and intergenerational grief—all while remaining devoted to an idea of goodness.”
Poet Franny Choi’s debut essay collection, We Radiant Things, is forthcoming from Ecco in October 2026. As described in the book listing, “[i]n this luminous essay collection, Choi descends into the uncanny valley to encounter notable cyborgs and robots from across American culture and asks why so many of them bear the faces of East Asian women.” If you were a fan of Choi’s collection Soft Science (one of my faves), then this is a book to look out for.
The Watering Hole Fellow Sanam Sheriff’s debut collection, HUM ہم, is forthcoming from University of Nebraska Press in October 2026. The collection “is a trans call to the beauty of attempt rather than the clarity of arrival. This book seeks as the pilgrim seeks, wandering from a plural sense of self with a lyric attunement to the wound’s power.”
Thank for reading! Until next time :)