Books
Debut Full-Length from Soft Skull Press
Winner of the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award
Winner of the 2023 Chicago Review of Books Award for Poetry
2024 Honor Book for Best Poetry by the Black Caucus of of the American Library Association
Finalist for the 2024 Midland Author Awards in Poetry
Advanced Praise
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Advanced Praise *
“Byas is equally comfortable writing both within and against form, invoking complex histories and singular moments of grace. This collection is further proof that Byas is one of the most important voices in American poetry. Settle in, readers. We are experiencing a legend in the making.”
“Taylor Byas is just now releasing her debut full-length poetry collection, but she’s already making a case for herself as a literary descendant of fellow Chicagoan Gwendolyn Brooks. Like Brooks, the 27-year-old Byas turns the everyday aspects of life into the exuberantly extraordinary.”
Praise For BloodWarm
There is no escaping. There is no hiding. There is only you and the page and the hauntings in which Taylor Byas brings forth in each poem. Bloodwarm is a book that chills the spine, yes, but also meditates on the now. We are at the gas station. We are on Twitter. We are leaving a voicemail for Madam C.J. Walker. Through rhythm, repetition, and rapport, Byas weaves together poems that will décor the night while we sit in a dark corner counting to ten, then screaming “ready or not, here I come.” And although we seek, it is her words that find us.
—Luther Hughes, Founder of Shade Literary Arts
Reviews of Bloodwarm
From a review in River Mouth Review, written by Risa Denenbeg:
In reportage from a life where the dangers of racism are always lurking, Byas has created a triumphant rejoinder.
From a review in StorySouth, written by Cat Robinson:
In her latest chapbook, Bloodwarm, Byas examines and explores the relationship between existing in a Black body and how a white centric society imposes on that. There are components of this set of poems that remind me of other profound Black writers. These include the language used, confidence in each speaker’s voice, the overall tone, and direct approach to the discussion on Blackness. The approach was similar to James Baldwin’s dedication to unabashedly speak truth and the poetic sense prompted thoughts about June Jordan’s poems regarding similar concepts.
From a review in Entropy Mag, written by Mel Ruth:
Bloodwarm is about racial violence and the challenges of being black in a country that undervalues a person based on their skin. But that’s not all it is. Bloodwarm is also about the erasure of black womanhood and blackness throughout history, an erasure that continues today.
From a review in The Poetry Question, written by Chris Margolin:
Having spent the last 20 years as an educator to the leaders, believers, and followers of tomorrow, Bloodwarm has the ability to turn heads, create conversation, and lead you toward change. It’s not going to scrape away at all of the Whiteout, but it will chip away enough to see what truth lies just under the surface.
Released July 2021
shutter
Out from Madhouse Press, March 2022
(Photo by Madeleine Corley)
“In SHUTTER, “each frame makes a stranger of” not just strangers, but of the selves we bracket, the language we tend with hands and tongues. Byas deploys double exposed syntax and the unflinching accuracy of film, turning page after phrase to create a gallery of the illumination and development survival demands of any woman, but especially Black women with the audacity to exist, dream, and unwrap themselves for the possibility of a love that is not consumption. A love letter to desire and its attendant dangers, SHUTTER does not quiver “in nosy moonlight,” it stands in the doorway seductively, daring you to expose yourself.
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