Bluff: A powerful new collection reckoning with America, protest and poetry itself

A searing new collection from the Forward Prize-winning American poet about the year 2020, the year that the world’s gaze turned to Minneapolis – Smith’s own home.

’Bluff is my book of the year. Absolutely breathtaking’ Joelle Taylor, author of C+NTO: + Othered Poems

‘You will want to underline almost every line … One of the best books of poetry I’ve read: buy it for anyone you love’ Hollie McNish, author of Plum

‘Gripping … It’s as though the world is a scattered puzzle that Danez analyses and bears witness to’ Yomi Sode, author of Manorism

Written during the time the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Minneapolis became the epicentre of protest following the murder of George Floyd, Bluff is Danez Smith’s powerful reckoning with their responsibility as a poet and with their hometown.

Smith brings a startling urgency to these poems, their questions demanding a new language, new textual shapes and a deep self-scrutiny. Ars poetica gives way to ‘ars america’. A photographic collage makes clear the consequence of accepting mass shootings. A brilliant long poem maps the history of Minneapolis-Saint Paul’s vibrant Rondo neighbourhood, before and after officials decided to run an interstate directly through it.

Bluff is a manifesto about artistic resilience when the places we most love – those given and made – are burning. In this collection, Smith turns to honesty, hope, rage and imagination to envision futures that seem possible.

PRAISE FOR DANEZ SMITH:

‘A poet of exceptional linguistic exuberance, style and grace’ Kayo Chingonyi, author of Kumukanda

‘A writer who never loses their way’ New York Times

’Smith’s ability to look death squarely in the eye and seize from it language that is fertile with myth, beauty and intellect is astonishing‘ Sandeep Parmar, Guardian