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Bluff: A powerful new collection reckoning with America, protest and poetry itself

By (author) Danez Smith, Read by Danez Smith

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Brought to you by Penguin. A searing new collection from the Forward Prize-winning American poet about the year that the worldâ€™s gaze turned to Minneapolis â€“ 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 Smithâ€™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 â€˜anti poeticaâ€™ and â€˜ars americaâ€™ to implicate poetryâ€™s collusions with unchecked capitalism. A brilliant long poem maps the history of Minneapolis-Saint Paulâ€™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 â€“ those given and made â€“ are burning. In this collection, Smith turns to honesty, hope, rage and imagination to envision futures that seem possible. â€˜A writer who never loses their wayâ€™ New York Times Â© Danez Smith 2024 (P) Penguin Audio 2024