Volume 117 Summer/Fall 2022

Featuring a folio for Black writers from Guest Editor Taylor Byas

From Taylor Byas’ Guest Editor’s Note: I initially saw this collective whole as a montage, flashes of a collective experience. And then, as I recalled a conversation I’d had with friends recently about Beyoncé’s Renaissance, my understanding of this project changed its shape. A few days before making the final decisions on these poems, I’d been in the car with my friends while the album played all the way through. One friend commented on the versatility of Beyoncé’s voice throughout the album, how she’d leaned into play in a way that she hadn’t in previous years. Another friend noted the importance of the transitions, how some of the songs didn’t feel as impactful if they were divorced from the outro of the song that came before it. This conversation played on a loop as I pored over these poems.

While curating, I came across Joy Priest’s poem “It’s Beyond Me,” where she writes, “It’s all blues / with him, stuck in the same stories / where the field was the world. Doesn’t he know another song?” I considered the publishing landscape, how Black writers are pressed to sing the same songs of oppression and hopelessness to be platformed. How even those opportunities are marked by disingenuous open calls for Black History Month or Juneteenth, editors throwing open the gates but drastically limiting the standing room inside. As my mind wandered back to the task at hand, I saw this act (and honor) of curating this space as an opportunity to play different songs about Blackness for the masses.

To purchase Volume 117 Summer/Fall 2022 featuring Taylor’s guest edited folio, please email poetlore@writer.org.