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National Poetry Month: Nicole Sealey

About Blog Post Apr 10, 2024 by SCLSNJ Staff
National Poetry Month: Nicole Sealey   Created by Bob Helmbrecht, collection development librarian Our National Poetry Month poet for today is Nicole Sealey.  Sealey's debut collection, "Ordinary Beast," was published in 2017 by Ecco Press. It was a finalist for the PEN Open Book and Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey has noted of Sealey’s work that “these are poems of thrilling sonic and syntactical play, formal dexterity, mythmaking, and delight in the ordinary rendered strange by new juxtapositions.” Sealy's follow-up collection was "The Ferguson Report: An Erasure," published in 2023 by Alfred A. Knopf. From the publisher's description: "In August 2014, Michael Brown--a young, unarmed Black man--was shot to death by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. What followed was a period of protests and turmoil, culminating in an extensive report that was filed by the Department of Justice detailing biased policing and court practices in the city ... Now, award-winning poet Nicole Sealey revisits the investigation in a book that redacts the report, an act of erasure that reimagines the original text as it strips it away. While the full document is visible in the background--weighing heavily on the language Sealey has preserved--it gives shape and disturbing context to what remains." "The Ferguson Report: An Erasure" has gotten a lot of excellent reviews, and was in “The New Yorker’s” Best Books of 2023 list. Poet Yusef Komunyakaa said of the collection: "The paced rhythm is almost painfully made as if fleshy blips on the heart meter—a ghostly master text beneath."  You can find poems, interviews, and more on the author's website. Read a few of Sealey's poems, then check out "Ordinary Beast" and "The Ferguson Report: An Erasure" today!
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