Staff Pick: The Shared World : Poems by Vievee Francis

Francis, Vievee. The Shared World : Poems. Evanston: TriQuarterly Books / Northwestern University Press, 2023.

A superb new book of poetry about memory — and how, when, and to whom we tell our stories — The Shared World by Vievee Francis looks the past straight in the eye to reveal what life is like for a Black woman in America today. Francis, a faculty member at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, captivates in her fourth collection with poems that are both tender and fierce, open and vulnerable, and explores loss, violence, and love, as she says in the title poem, “To take in or do whatever forwards the living, this tripwire keeping us tied / kite to string, present to past, arrow / to quiver.”

Get it: 

Borrow The Shared World : Poems from the Davis Family Library.