Kendra Allen is releasing a new poetry book — her debut collection, in fact — and it's causing quite the stir in the literary world. Allen's book is called The Collection Plate, and while it won't officially drop until July 6th, pre-orders are available now.
The themes center around the overlapping experiences of girlhood, Blackness, sex, and personhood in America. By drawing from personal experiences and the collective Black consciousness, The Collection Plate originally started as a "documentary poetics project."
As the winner of the 2018 Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction for her essay collection When You Learn The Alphabet, the Dallas native is best known for bridging the intersection of personal narratives and cultural commentary.
But the loss of her father, which she says "not in death, but in life — and I got so angry that I fell in love with poetry," drove her to take a more poetic bend in her work and question what she called her "allegiance to masculine pronouns and masculine saviors."
"I sit in the same spot. I write poems and forget about my appearance. I write poems and collect their woe and attempt to eulogize myself in each one through internal and systemic forces…I talk to God and become unafraid to ask why they (God) take. I talk to Our Father and become content with not praising the dead and not reigning in the living." she said.
You can click here to pre-order Kendra Allen's debut poetry book.