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Poetry Books of 2021 [The Best 5]

Poetry books often become the bridge between you and your emotions. In fact, what is written inside helps you find the right expression of your feelings.

On top of that, poems also talk about more serious things like political, social, or environmental issues. So, we have collected 2021’s best books of poems just for you. Let’s have a look!

5 Poetry Books to Highlight Your 2021

Here, you will see five poetry books that we believe deserve to be the highlight of 2021. Are you ready? Let’s go!

1. Eat or We Both Starve – Victoria Kennefick

The first one is a book by Victoria Kennefick. If you think this is a mere collection of poems about literal food, you’ll have to think again.

In Eat or We Both Starve, Kennefick invites you to her poetry journey where she talks about religion, body, and family. No, she doesn’t write about those topics in a usual manner. Let us give you a peek at her opening poem,

“LEARNING TO EAT MY MOTHER, WHERE MY MOTHER IS THE TEACHER.”

2. New and Selected Poems (Picador) – Ian Duhig

Here is the second one. Ian Duhig is a renowned and respectable British poet. Even the literature segment on British Council described him as someone who “is a poet and ransacks all the dictionaries.”

If you want to know why the New and Selected Poems will answer your curiosity. This is because the book consists of “material from his acclaimed debut, The Bradford Count, to the present day.”

3. A Blood Condition As One of the Best Poetry Books

Then, A Blood Condition is a poetry book by Kayo Chingonyi. He is a Zambian-born British poet who lost his parents to HIV. So, some of the poems are meant for them.

Other than that, his poetry also pays homage to his root as a Zambian. One interesting poem in the book is interior w/ ceiling fan where he wrote,

“breath is the oldest language

any of us know”

4. A Vertical Art: Oxford Lectures (Faber)

The next one is A Vertical Art, which is a collection of Simon Armitage’s lectures during his tenure as Oxford University Professor of Poetry. This comment from the Goodreads community should make you want to read A Vertical Art.

It says, “Armitage is both a talented poet and a keen observer of the practice of poetry in the contemporary world, and his insights are almost always valuable and thought-provoking.”

5. Notes on the Sonnets – Luke Kennard

Luke Kennard is a poet and a novelist. And his Notes on the Sonnets consists of 154 prose poems that are inspired by Shakespeare’s sonnets. In this book, he also uses the first-person speaker.

TLS specifically wrote about this book saying that “This could become tiresome, even oppressive.” But, Kennard’s voice is very distinct and it makes his book consistently entertaining. His funny, anxious, and overthinking traits have become the staple of his poems.