I: New and Selected Poems - Toi Derricotte

A Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry
Recipient of the 2020 Frost Medal for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in Poetry
BCALA Honor Book for Best Poetry Award 2020

In Derricotte's own words:

"How do you gain access to the
power of parts of yourself you
abhor, and make them sing
with beauty, tenderness, and compassion?

This is the record of fifty years
of victories in the reclamation
of a poet's voice."

The story of Toi Derricotte is a hero's odyssey. It is the journey of a poetic voice that in each book earns her way to home, to her own commanding powers.

I, New and Selected Poems shows the reader both the closeness of the enemy and the poet's inherent courage, inventiveness, and joy. It is a record of one woman's response to the repressive and fracturing forces around the subjects of race, class, color, gender, and sexuality. Each poem is an act of victory as they find their way through the repressive forces to speak with both beauty and truth.

This collection features more than thirty new poems as well as selections from five of Derricotte's previous published books of poetry.