Wicked Enchantment // Selected Poems

Coleman was a beat-up, broke, and Black woman who wrote with anger, humor, and clarity.Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poemsis a selection of 130 of her poems, edited and introduced by Terrance Hayes.

A self-made writer from Black Los Angeles, Wanda Coleman made art while living every day with racism, poverty, violence. Her triumph is in words that endure. Its time for Colemans courageous, impassioned, inspiring, one-of-a-kind voice to reach readers everywhere.

Wanda Coleman–poet, storyteller and journalist–was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. Coleman was awarded the prestigious 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize forBathwater Winefrom the American Academy of Poets, becoming the first African-American woman to ever win the prize, and was a bronze-medal finalist for the 2001 National Book Award for Poetry forMercurochrome.Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poemsis the first new collection of her work since her death in 2013.

Terrance Hayes(editor) is the author ofLighthead(National Book Award winner) and, most recently,American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin(finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award and aNew York TimesCritics’ Top Books of 2018)–both from Penguin Books. Hayes was awarded a MacArthur Genius Fellowship in 2014. Hayes served as the 2017-2018 poetry editor forNew York Times Magazine, and was guest editor of The Best American Poetry 2014. Hayes lives in New York City.

• Publisher:Black Sparrow Press (March 23, 2021)
• Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems by Wanda Coleman
• Language:English
• Paperback:224 pages
• ISBN-10:1574232460
• ISBN-13:9781574232462
• Item Weight:10.4 ounces
• Dimensions:5.75 x 0.5 x 8.75 inches

Author: Coleman, Wanda, Hayes, Terrance

California

Published on 29 April 2021 by Penguin Books Ltd in the United Kingdom.

Paperback / softback | 288 pages
129 x 198 x 24 | 252g

‘Essential reading’ Roger Robinson’Hateful and hilarious, heartbroke and hellbent’ Mary Karr’Sure, wise and devastating . . . a joy’ Caleb Azumah Nelson’Wanda Coleman is not just wickedly wise, she is transcendent’ Washington PostNobody wrote about police hassle like she did. Nobody wrote about making ends meet, about the history of the slave trade or the comedy of the daily grind, with the same breathtaking originality and brio; and few writers, before or since, have had the courage to write with such honesty about their everyday experience of life – and love – in an unjust world.

This is the first ever UK publication of the poetry of Wanda Coleman: a beat-up, broke and Black woman who wrote with defiance, humour and clarity about her life on the margins, and who went overlooked by the establishment for decades – even as she was known colloquially as ‘the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles’.

Wicked Enchantment gathers 130 of Coleman’s poems in a selection by Terrance Hayes. Funny, angry, endlessly alive and written with an immediacy and frankness that captivate, here is the essential work of a poet of fierce resistance and self-belief against the odds.