Now in its 29th year, National Poetry Month is celebrated every April. The following is a reading list of suggested titles.
Edited by award-winning poet Kevin Young, “A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker: 1925-2025” (Knopf, 2025) is the poetry anthology we have all been waiting for. At 980 pages, spanning 100 years, and separated into 15 sections, it’s hard to imagine another anthology of such literal and figurative weight. LGBTQ voices are well-represented in the pages where you will find poems by Mary Oliver, W.H. Auden, May Swenson, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, James Merrill, Audre Lorde, James Schuyler, Alfred Corn, Thom Gunn, Ellen Bass, Nikki Giovanni, Jericho Brown, Wayne Koestenbaum, Kay Ryan, Mark Doty, Camonghne Felix, H.D., Djuna Barnes, Allen Ginsberg, Henri Cole, Ocean Vuong, Frank Bidart, May Sarton, Alex Dimitrov, Colm Tóibín, Richie Hofmann, Stephanie Burt, Marilyn Hacker, Richard Blanco, Eileen Myles, Tennessee Williams, and Gertrude Stein, among others.
Gay poet Daniel Meltz doesn’t mess around. His debut collection “It Wasn’t Easy To Reach You” (Trail to Table Press, 2025) practically vibrates with Frank O’Hara, Walt Whitman, Joe Brainard, and Allen Ginsberg energy, all presented in an assured New York poetry voice with lines such as “shoplifting ‘The Bell Jar’ at Brentano’s in the Village that became a Duane Reade” and pop culture references galore.
New York, or as queer poet Alex Dimitrov calls it “Our city of New York,” in the titular poem from his new book “Ecstasy” (Knopf, 2025), also figures prominently in his work. Maintaining his trademark stanza-less style, Dimitrov continues to mine the short line, which serves to propel the “emotional music” of these sexually-driven, men-obsessed, fashion-forward, cigarette and wine-fueled poems.
“Hardly Creatures” (Tin House, 2025) is the debut poetry collection by disabled, bakla (gay in Tagalog), Filipino American poet Rob Macasia Colgate. With accessibility, and its related meanings, at the source of the work, Colgate’s book, complete with an “access legend,” functions as a poetic gallery exhibition, as experimental as it is accessible, equal parts personal, universal and experiential.
The act of writing, including writing poetry, is mainly a solitary undertaking. However, two queer poets have teamed up with two ally poets for a pair of riveting collaborations. “The Latest: 20 Ghazals for 2020” (Small Harbor Publishing, 2025) by lesbian poet Julie Marie Wade & Denise Duhamel, dedicated to the late lesbian poet Maureen Seaton, brings the 7th century Arabic poetic form ghazal into the 21st century, complete with personal, pop culture, and pandemic references.
In “Q&A for the End of the World” (WordTech Editions, 2025), queer poet Kim Roberts & Michael Gushue conduct a poetic dialogue about classic science-fiction flicks of the mid-20th century including “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” “Godzilla,” “The Day The Earth Stood Still,” “The War of the Worlds,” and “The Blob,” to name a few. Perhaps inspired by the current state of the world, as we inch ever closer to doomsday (it’s 89 seconds to midnight, as of this writing), Roberts and Gushue conduct a literary question and answer period in poems that alternate between serious and silly, informative and informal, resulting in an otherworldly experience. The notes on the movies, as well as the collaboration note, are also worth reading.
Out in May, the anthology “Love Is for All of Us” (Storey Publishing, 2025), edited by James Crews & Brad Peacock, is subtitled “Poems of Tenderness and Belonging from the LGBTQ+ Community and Friends.” Among the queer poets included, you will find Yvonne Zipter, Richard Blanco, Joan Larkin, Mark Doty, Andrea Gibson, Minnie Bruce Pratt, AE Hines, Stephanie Burt, Audre Lorde, Ellen Bass, Carl Phillips, Alex Dimitrov, Adrienne Rich, and Paul Tran. There might have been room for other poets writing “of tenderness and belonging” if the co-editors hadn’t published so many by themselves (four by Crews, two by Peacock).
The late, gay poet George Franklin, who died by suicide at 71 in 2023, struggled with recurring depression and being institutionalized. The author of a book of criticism, a chapbook, and a 2007 poetry collection, Franklin’s final book, “Lamentations” (Ristretto, 2024), containing the 40-page poem “Talking Head,” was published posthumously.
Although primarily known as a poet, queer writer Claude McKay (1890-1948), credited with being at the forefront of the Harlem Renaissance, also published works of non-fiction, as well as seven novels (three posthumously). Originally published in 1928, McKay’s debut novel, “Home To Harlem” (Penguin Classics, 2025), known as “the first commercial bestseller by an African American” author, has been reissued with a new introduction by Belinda Edmonson.
