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

(Paperback)

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A searing new collection from the Forward prizewinning 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

Reviews

'In this latest collection Smith returns to examinations of racism, of its insidious violence, and of resistance to it. But this new work also strikingly explores the idea of the poets culpability, about how we write about injustices without profiting from them, either financially or in deeper cultural terms. There is an honesty in the work that is at times overwhelming, a book too hot to touch. This is Smiths gift, this search for a sense of truth - or even justice - in a world without much of either. Inventive, restless, awe struck, and grieving, Smith pushes language and sonics like no other poet. In their steepled hands, poems become prayers to a god we are afraid to look at. It might be too early to declare, but I don't think so. Bluff is my book of the year. Absolutely breathtaking' * Joelle Taylor, author of C+nto & Othered Poems *
'Bluff is a gripping collection that breaks the fourth wall. It is cathartic in its outpouring, inviting the reader to join, and be present. Its as though the world is a scattered puzzle that Danez analyses and bears witness to. A reality, a mourning, an abstractness in making sense of, and motions to piece together * Yomi Sode, author of Manorism *
'I didn't think Danez Smith could get any more brilliant. I was wrong. A book that whispers to your bones. This is a book I will keep open. There is too much inside to ever let it close. You will want to underline, to highlight, to heart almost every line. Yes, everybody should read this book; not only for what is said, but for the impeccable, experimental and essential poetry in which it is written. This is one of the best books of poetry I've read: buy it for anyone you love' * Hollie McNish *

Author Bio

Danez Smith is the author of Homie (2020) and Don't Call Us Dead (2018), which won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Four Quartets Prize awarded by the Poetry Society of America and was a finalist for the National Book Award. They live in Minneapolis.