Bluff

''Bluff is my book of the year. Absolutely breathtaking'' Joelle Taylor

''Gripping ... It¿s as though the world is a scattered puzzle that Danez analyses and bears witness to'' Yomi Sode

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

Written after two years of artistic silence, during which 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 role and responsibility as a poet and with their hometown. This is a book of awakening out of violence, guilt, shame and critical pessimism to imagine how we can strive towards a new existence in a world that seems to be dissolving into desolate futures.

Smith brings a startling urgency to these poems, their questions demanding a new language, a deep