YEET!

Afrofuturist poetry that envisions Black people finding new worlds of freedom.
  
Following the traditions of Eve L. Ewing, Rio Cortez, and Douglas Kearney, jason b. crawford’s YEET! envisions the Black community lifted off the earth and set free towards the stars. These poems ask what a free Black people would look like and how we might achieve such a thing. This collection presents a new take on Afrofuturism and utopianism. Rather than looking to a future of technological change, it steps years ahead to show how people are happier once they are no longer owned. These poems speak to racism, gun violence, colonization, global warming, flight, joy, friendship, and noise. This is a book about creating new worlds without the systems of supremacy that held down the old one.
 
YEET! is the winner of the 2023 Omnidawn 1st/2nd Poetry Book Contest, chosen by Sawako Nakasayu.
 

"The poems in YEET! act as incantations for hope, for life, for an 'us.' Through its variety of images, rhythms, and forms, YEET! saves room for joy, love, anger, sadness, healing, and yearning." -- Quintin Collins, author of "Claim Tickets for Stolen People" and "The Dandelion Speaks of Survival"
"YEET! is a vibrant and powerful collection that prods at the future sacred and meditates on the archive of our own choosing. In poems that transfigure or vanish before our eyes, Crawford invites the reader into the contagious energy of their world -- a place where the scaffolding is Black, collective, and alive." -- Rio Cortez, author of "Golden Ax"
"There is an intense cosmic energy required to do what crawford’s YEET! does: to give life and love to that impossible, yet constant, toggle between that which cannot be said, and that which cannot be ignored. It tenderly holds the complexity of being Black and queer in the kind of country where skittles can be heartbreaking. It tends marigolds and dahlias, right in the breach. Violence, beauty, smoke. Poetic craft runs deep and deft, exploratory. We ponder what to do with the 'dirt-spit bouquet.' The reader is carried—from intimate poems of friendship and love, to the vast horizon—'small petals of lavender cleaning the sky of its grief.' When not carrying the beat of a party, with all its overtones and undertones, the poems pulse with quiet grace and heat. This book is a radiant, intergalactic, hot bloom of a fire—it is so much love." -- Sawako Nakayasu, author of "Pink Waves," judge’s citation for Omnidawn 2022 1st/2nd Book Contest
"YEET! is a collection of departures and arrivals where all roads lead to love. Guided by a heart that uses form, homage, and boundless lyric to lead the way, be prepared to exit these poems with wings added to your spirit." -- Danez Smith, author of "Bluff"
"As we stumble through a new world where truth is in such short supply, let’s be thankful that Jason steadfastly refuses the safety of silence as they confront the crusade to disappear Black history, the villainy of wars, and the battles we fight ceaselessly within ourselves." -- Patricia Smith, author of "The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems"

jason b. crawford (they/he/she) is the author of Year of the Unicorn Kidz. Their work has been published in POETRY Magazine, Academy of American Poets, Cincinnati Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and RHINO Poetry, among others. They are a 2023 Emerging Writers Fellow for Lambda Literary.
 

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