Bluff

A searing new collection from the Forward Prize-winning American poet with a devoted online and international following.

'A writer who never loses their way' - New York Times

A searing new collection from the Forward Prize-winning American poet about the year that the world's gaze turned to Minneapolis - Smith's own home.

Written after two years of artistic silence, during which the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Minneapolis became the epicentre of protest following the murder of George Floyd, Bluff is Danez Smith's powerful reckoning with their role and responsibility as a poet and with their hometown. This is a book of awakening out of violence, guilt, shame, and critical pessimism to imagine how we can strive towards a new existence in a world that seems to be dissolving into desolate futures.

Smith brings a startling urgency to these poems, their questions demanding a new language, a deep self-scrutiny, and virtuosic textual shapes. A series of ars poetica gives way to 'anti poetica' and ‘ars america’ to implicate poetry’s collusions with unchecked capitalism. A brilliant long poem maps the history of Minneapolis-Saint Paul's vibrant Rondo neighbourhood before and after officials decided to run an interstate directly through it.

Bluff is a manifesto about artistic resilience when the places we most love - those given and made - are burning. In this collection, Smith turns to honesty, hope, rage, and imagination to envision futures that seem possible.

'A poet of exceptional linguistic exuberance, style, and grace' - Kayo Chingonyi

'Smith writes towards the abundant and the difficult and makes something that is rare - a piece of art that refuses self-consciousness and is exactly what it wants to be' - Raven Leilani on Homie