February 2026 Roundup
DeeSoul's reading and recommendations from February 2026
Hellooooooo poets of the internet. After a very chilly run of weeks, we find ourselves at the end of the best month of the year. I’m very happy with the work I was able to do this month on the podcast! We dropped Victoria Mbabazi’s conversation on Persona, and very recently started a collaboration with Honey Literary to publish reviews ahead of upcoming e·pon·y·mous episodes. The first review is “Offering of Flesh & Dirt: A Review of I.S. Jones’ Debut Collection, Bloodmercy,” which you can read now ahead of Jones’ e·pon·y·mous episode dropping Monday, March 2nd.
With all the work I’ve been doing to set the podcast up for the future, I feel behind a bit on my reading, but I plan to get back on that horse properly in March! Keep reading below for some February highlights, and hey — thanks for reading :)
What I’ve Read This Month
1) The Siren in the Twelfth House by Victoria Mbabazi
Rating: ★★★★
Genre: Poetry (Debut)
Archetype: The Playlist
dear god if you didn’t want to hunt for me
you should’ve came with more answers
- pg. 19, “Ninth House Target Practice”
The Siren in the Twelfth House is a collection concerned with confrontation. Confronting love, confronting heartbreak, confronting what may or may not be written in the stars for us. The presence of the siren washes over us, drawing us in with its lyrical freedom & shifting as needed for the environment, immersing us in game nights and target practice and messy relationships. With siren songs, one typically hears and sees what they desire, which is sometimes a truth they have not yet faced.The Siren in the Twelfth House dares us to face our truth, and more importantly, to survive it.
2) The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers by Bhanu Kapil
Rating: ★★★★
Genre: Poetry (Debut)
Archetype: The Interrogation (combo of Essay and Formula)
Another thing about fishes: they are constantly submerged in the element of their waking.
-pg 31, “19. And what would you say if you could?”
I previously called the intersection of the formula and essay archetypes “the experiment,” but after reading this collection, I believe that interrogation is far more apt. This collection resists the idea of narrative, instead making each of its 98 prose poems their own brief worlds. I was mostly interested in Kapil’s translation of image, her syntactical choices, & the ways poems were put in conversation due to the collection’s 12 recurring titles. I think this book is a great lesson in estrangement and recursion.
New Poems in the Catalog
From Emily Jungmin Yoon:
“From An Ordinary Misfortune” | the Offing, 2015
“Hello Miss Pretty Bitch” | Rattle, 2014
From Eve L. Ewing
“testify” | Poem-a-Day, 2022
Work to Look Out For
Derrick Austin’s third collection, This Elegance, is forthcoming from BOA Editions in May 2026. The book “engages with visual arts through the concept of sacra conversazione (“sacred conversation”), a style of Renaissance painting that imagines divine communion across time and space.” I was a big fan of Austin’s debut, Trouble the Water, so I’m really looking forward to this one as well.
Reuben Gelley Newman’s debut collection, DEAR DEAR, is forthcoming from Trio House Press in July 2026 and “renders queer love through the lens of music, art, nature, and politics.” In the collection, Newman “ flirts with nostalgia but refuses to dwell in the past, asking how remembering our ancestors can reinvigorate our present struggles.”
Also forthcoming in July 2026 is Kyle Carrero Lopez’s debut, Party Line, from Graywolf Press. The book “centers three interconnected forces: social life, US-Cuba relations, and the lives of Black people in the United States and Cuba. Through familial, satirical, and geopolitical lenses, Party Line considers how countries—and people—wield power over those they have othered.” Lopez’s poetry is both humorous and sharp, and I’m excited to see this collection in the world soon.
What’s Going On? (with me)
I’ve got a couple of things going on in the near future, if you want to catch me/ know what I’ve been up to:
On Friday, March 6, at 6 PM, Tyger Quarterly, dialogist, and The Year are collaborating to bring you an AWP off-site reading, featuring Emily Pittinos, DeeSoul Carson, Sophia Terazawa, James Garwood-Cole, Julian Talamantez Brolaski, and Emily Bark Brown. If you’ll be at AWP, I hope I’ll see you there!
On Saturday, April 18, if you happen to be in New Orleans, I’ll be at the New Orleans Poetry Festival as a panelist for the Humor/Horror: after Douglas Kearney session. In this panel, we’ll be discussing how humor influences our ways of writing towards not only diagnosing, but also imagining alternatives to the everyday horrors that are deeply entangled in the business of living. This is an under-examined area of craft that acts as a mode of resistance against hegemonic norms necessary for empire-making. This discussion will center on humor as a method of disorientation that lends itself towards an invitation for mutual care.
Thank for reading! Until next time :)