Poetry at Milkweed

The Poetry Progam at Milkweed Editions

At Milkweed Editions we believe reading is life-changing, and our poetry program is no exception. From publishing the collections of U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón to our expansive Multiverse series to the many debut poets on our list, poetry published by Milkweed pushes the envelope for what poetry can do, connects readers with ideas and emotions that change perspectives, introduces new voices, and challenges the conventional concept that poetry is only for some.

In addition to increasing access, redefining nature poetry, superceeding expectations, and platforming new voices, poetry at Milkweed is exceptional because of the community of interconnected readers, writers, booksellers, educators, librarians, and partners that make it all possible.

2025 Poetry Catalog

  • Poetry
    Sarah V. Schweig

    Winner of the Jake Adam York Prize, this collection of poems seeks answers about how to live meaningfully in a world saturated by late capitalism.

    “The question isn’t / what exists,” writes Sarah V. Schweig in her engrossing and prize-winning…

  • Poetry
    Latif Askia Ba

    A ground-breaking collection of poems exploring disability, syntax, and rhythm from a Brooklyn-based Senegalese American writer with cerebral palsy.

    Latif Askia Ba—an acclaimed poet with Choreic Cerebral Palsy—honors all the things that arise from our…

  • Poetry
    Rosalie Moffett

    A brilliant and lithe collection of poems making space for the resolve and hope of motherhood amid consumerist dreams and nightmares.

    Consumerism—its privations and raptures—seeps into all aspects of contemporary life. “Who knows me / as the search…

  • Poetry
    Wayne Miller

    A tender and provocative collection of poems interrogating the troubles and wonders of both childhood and parenthood against the backdrop of global violence.

    From accomplished poet Wayne Miller comes a collection examining how an individual’s story…

  • Poetry
    Ada Limón

    A 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Big Reads Selection
    A 2024 NPR “Books We Love” Selection

    Published in association with the Library of Congress and edited by the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States, a singular collection of fifty

  • Poetry
    Keith S. Wilson

    Radiant with a tenderness that is only achieved through close attention, these poems offer witnessing and formalistic exploration as well as a unique cosmology that is made ever more expansive by blurred lines between the instructional and the…

  • Poetry
    Ada Limón
    Longlisted for for the Griffin Poetry Prize Longlisted for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize
    An astonishing collection about interconnectedness—between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves—from U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón.
  • Poetry
    Ada Limón

    Drawing from six previously published books—including widely acclaimed collections The Hurting Kind, The Carrying, and Bright Dead Things—as well as vibrant new work, Startlement exalts the mysterious. With a tender curiosity, Limón wades into…

  • Poetry
    Devon Walker-Figueroa

    Traversing historical, terrestrial, and discursive limits, Devon Walker-Figueroa brings a chorus of perspectives, eras, idioms, and ideals into novel if not turbulent dialogue. In this dazzling second collection, bursting with detailed case studies…

  • Poetry
    Jason Allen-Paisant

    Jason Allen-Paisant has emerged in recent years as one of the most celebrated poets in the UK and across the West Indies. Winner already of the Forward Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize, his writing has been acclaimed for its artistry and the fresh…

    Edited by US Poet Laureate Ada Limón

    You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World

    Poetry in Translation

      The Multiverse series

        Frequently taught poetry

          Featured Poets
          • Blog Post

            Bluest Nude by Ama Codjoe wins 2023 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize

            Milkweed Staff — 09/19/2023

            We are thrilled to announce that Bluest Nude by Ama Codjoe is the winner of the Academy of American Poets 2023 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. This $25,000 prize recognizes the most outstanding book of poetry published in the United States in the previous year.

            Codjoe has received a 2023 Whiting Award, a 2017 Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, and a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship. She is the 2023 Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum. Bluest Nude was a finalist for both the NAACP Image Award in…

          • Blog Post

            Fady Joudah wins $100,000 Jackson Poetry Prize

            Milkweed Staff — 04/18/2024

            “Distinguished by his courage to speak in the face of the unspeakable,
            in poems of lyric concision and intensity.”

            Poets & Writers announced today that Fady Joudah has won the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize, which this year carries an increased award of $100,000. Given annually by Poets & Writers to recognize an American poet of exceptional talent, the prize is endowed by a gift from the Liana Foundation and is named for the John and Susan Jackson family. There is no application process; poets are nominated by a panel of their peers, selected by Poets & Writers, who remain anonymous. Those who have…

          • Blog Post

            Honoring Tuệ Sỹ

            Milkweed Staff — 04/17/2024

            Milkweed is deeply saddened by the recent passing of Vietnamese Buddhist monk Tuệ Sỹ, whose poems we published in a bilingual edition last year as Dreaming the Mountain, with translations by Nguyen Ba Chung and Martha Collins. Born in 1943, Tuệ Sỹ joined a Zen order at the age of ten and later became an eminent Buddhist scholar, professor, translator, and poet. He actively resisted the idea that Buddhism should serve as a tool for any political agenda, and was well known for his dissidence.

            Following study at the Institute of Buddhism in Nha Trang, Tuệ Sỹ moved to Saigon, where he became a…

          • Blog Post

            Celebrating the polyvocal launch of Tressing Motions at the Edge of Mistakes

            Milkweed Staff — 03/11/2024

            On February 22, Milkweed Editions hosted a virtual launch event to celebrate the publication of Imane Boukaila’s Tressing Motions at the Edge of Mistakes: Poems. The book is the fourth addition to Multiverse, a literary series curated by—and devoted to—neurodiverse voices. Boukaila was joined by Multiverse editor, Chris Martin, who moderated the event, and four poets selected by Boukaila to “give voice” to their favorite poems from her book. The launch concluded with a dazzling “homing rally,” a collaborative poetry exercise open to all.

            Among the many feats Multiverse has accomplished in the…

          • Blog Post
            Photograph of JJJJJeromeEllis signing books at Open Book

            The power of music and verse with stuttering poet JJJJJerome Ellis

            Sean Beckford — 11/20/2023

            “A stutter is an heirloom—something precious, that should be cherished.”

            JJJJJerome Ellis inherited his stutter from his mother, who also stutters. They don’t speak often of their shared inheritance but she is supportive of his work. He sees his stutter as an heirloom and his teacher—both in language and in music. He has learned to gracefully accept and even anticipate how it informs his artistic processes of speaking and performing. In his new book, Aster of Ceremonies, he creates a world that blooms backward, reimagining what it means for Black and disabled people to have taken, and to…

          • Blog Post

            Weijia Pan wins 2023 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize

            Milkweed Staff — 12/19/2023
            Ibrahim Badshah

            We are thrilled to announce that Weijia Pan is the winner of the 2023 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize. His manuscript, titled Motherlands, was selected by judge Louise Glück and will be published in September 2024. In addition to publication, Weijia Pan will receive $10,000.

            We at Milkweed Editions are deeply saddened by the loss of Louise Glück, a deeply generous and prolific member of the literary community. Glück worked closely with our team to select Motherlands, and with Weijia Pan to develop the manuscript. Her attention and care to this process is emblematic of her brilliance as a poet and her…

          • Blog Post
            Photo of Ada Limon seated at home

            U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón awarded 2023 MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’

            Milkweed Staff — 10/04/2023
            Video URL

            We are overjoyed and honored to announce that U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón has been awarded a 2023 MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the “genius grant”! The MacArthur Fellowship is an $800,000, no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential. Limón is one of twenty 2023 Fellows, including composers, scientists, artists, scholars, and more.

            MacArthur Fellows Director Marlies Carruth highlights each Fellow’s dedication to the natural world in her announcement statement:

            “The 2023 MacArthur Fellows are applying individual…

          • Blog Post

            Ava Nathaniel Winter wins 2023 National Poetry Series

            Milkweed Staff — 09/25/2023

            We are thrilled to announce that Ava Nathaniel Winter has been named one of five winners of the 2023 National Poetry Series. Her manuscript Transgenesis was selected by poet Sean Hill and will be published by Milkweed Editions in August 2024. In addition to publication, Winter will receive $10,000.

            Ava Nathaniel Winter is the author of a poetry chapbook, Safe House. Her poetry has appeared in The Baffler, Beloit Poetry Journal, Poetry International, Room, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. She served as a Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University and received an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio…

          • Blog Post

            [...] by Fady Joudah is a 2024 National Book Award Finalist for Poetry

            Milkweed Staff — 11/19/2024

            Please join us in honoring and celebrating […] by Fady Joudah, 2024 National Book Award Finalist for Poetry.

            “Fady Joudah’s […] scribes the elliptical seam between heritage and history into a sustained meditation on war, displacement, and love. Punctuated with the music of maqam in the marrow of its mission, this timeless collection illuminates an existential Palestinian struggle that rises to the universal through Joudah’s deft, querying verse.”—National Book Award judges citation

            From the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize winner and one of our most acclaimed contemporary writers, this urgent and…

          • Blog Post
            Photo of Melissa Kwasny, wearing a blue shirt, against a brownish orange background

            Voicing grief: the language of elegy

            Milkweed Staff — 09/19/2024

            By Melissa Kwasny

            One of the first things I learned as a hospice volunteer is to think of death not as a medical emergency but rather as a spiritual event. After attending many deaths, including that of both my parents, I have learned something else: dying is a spiritual process, not a moment. It is a process not only for the person experiencing it but also for their loved ones who are left with grief.

            Grief is universal. All peoples, and most animals, experience it. It is, paradoxically, also individual. We each suffer grief uniquely. It is perhaps our most dangerous emotion. People really do…

          • Blog Post

            Poetry: A Global Enterprise

            Milkweed Staff — 09/19/2024

            Weijia Pan’s debut collection of poems, Motherlands, was selected by the late Louise Glück as the winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize in 2024. Among other things, the book is a transnational exploration of personal, familial, and cultural trauma, as well as the more universal trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic. Pan’s poetry draws on countless juxtapositions (of two countries, two languages, past and present, and national loyalty versus personal transparency), questioning “home,” nostalgia, and self-exile in order to express himself through the lens of a dual citizen. In the following interview…

          • Blog Post

            Four questions with Daywork author Jessica Fisher

            Milkweed Staff — 08/12/2024

            How do artists work within constrictions of time? How can our existence be traced through art? How does writing ekphrastic poetry compare with linguistic translation? How is historical time considered with care in stretching both towards the past and into the future? These are some of the questions poet Jessica Fisher unpacks with her work in Daywork and in our Q&A below!

            Milkweed Staff: Daywork takes its title from the giornata—the term in fresco painting for the section of wet plaster that can be painted in a single day. When did you first discover this concept? And what prompted you to use…

          • Blog Post

            Bo Hee Moon Wins the Ninth Annual Jake Adam York Prize

            Milkweed Staff — 03/17/2025
            Photograph by Christopher Zebo

            ANNOUNCING THE WINNER OF THE 2024–25 JAKE ADAM YORK PRIZE

            Milkweed Editions and Copper Nickel are thrilled to announce that judge Matthew Olzmann has chosen Bo Hee Moon’s book Birthstones in the Province of Mercy as the winner of the 2024–25 Jake Adam York Prize. Birthstones in the Province of Mercy will be published by Milkweed Editions in January, 2026, and Moon will receive $2,000. 

            A South Korean adoptee, Bo Hee Moon is the author of one previous book of poems, Omma, Sea of Joy and Other Astrological Signs, which she published under another name with Tinderbox Editions in 2021. Her poems…