The Mycelium Chest
Ongoing poetry & book recs - I will keep adding to this page so check back in as often as you'd like!
🌾 🪶 🦊 🦉 🌻
Note: I also share a whole bunch of quotes, readings, and thoughts in my Notes here on Substack!
Poems & Poetry Collection Recommendations
(also included at the end of each monthly craft post)
Your Kingdom by Eleni Sikelianos
How to Apologize by Ellen Bass
Palestinian by Ibrahim Nasrallah
Breve Pausa by Martín Espada
Facts About the Moon by Dorianne Laux
Three Poems From Ireland by Pádraig Ó Tuama
Revolutionary Letter #80 by Diane di Prima
Life On Earth by Dorianne Laux
This entire collection: Lead Me to Life: Voices of the African Diaspora (Sapiens—introduction linked here)
Elder by Jason Vasser-Elong
They’ll Steal Your Eyes, They’ll Steal Your Teeth by Cory-Alice André-Johnson
Are We So Different? by Irma McClaurin
Middle Ground by Dina Rivera
Window by Jason Vasser-Elong
The Voice of Diaspora by Lara de Paula Passos
Riot by Dina Rivera
Surfing in Color by Traben Pleasant (this one’s my favourite)
Lessons We Learn by Jason Vasser-Elong
Rings of Fire by Craig Santos Perez
The Cookout by Día Joy Wright
Body as the very present by Yrsa Daley-Ward
Summons by Aurora Levins Morales
Trees at Night by Helene Johnson
The Bees by Audre Lorde
The Mushroom Hunters by Neil Gaiman
Cutting Greens by Lucille Clifton
The Quiet Machine by Ada Limón
The Facts of Life by Pádraig Ó Tuama
To the Young Who Want to Die by Gwendolyn Brooks
At the Intersection of Sarinah Plaza, Thamrin Street by Moh. Faiz Maulana
The Venus Hottentot by Elizabeth Alexander
Fishing for Dust by Mesak Takhelmayum
Infant, Name Once Known by Jenny L. Davis
[if your complexion is a mess] by Harryette Mullen
Red Beans by Victor Hernández Cruz
Ballad in A by Cathy Park Hong
Your Fade-out is a Tiny Philosophy But No Less True for That by Chad Bennett
Not to Be Confused with “Poem” by Geffrey Davis
The Middle Passage by Robert Hayden
Reading Celan in a Subway Station by Carolina Ebeid
WHO REAL؟ by Marwa Helal
Home Body by Rupi Kaur
Devotions by Mary Oliver
An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo
Poetry Films (On Being)
Poems to Carry in Your Pocket (On Being)
Poetry Unbound (podcast with Pádraig Ó Tuama)
If You Are Over Staying Woke by Morgan Parker
Portrait of My Father Drowning by Tariq Luthun
The Other - a collection gathered by Sally Bliumis-Dunn
Looking For Poetry by Carlos Drummond de Andrade
The Wild Iris by Louise Glück
A Word on Statistics by Wisława Szymborska
Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward (Among them Nora and Henry III) by Gwendolyn Brooks
Theology by Ocean Vuong
The Visit by Alma Simba
won't you celebrate with me by Lucille Clifton
Making a Fist by Naomi Shihab Nye
Something to Believe In by Carl Phillips
After the Dinner Party by Adrienne Su
Borrow by Sarah McCartt Jackson
First Time Brushing Teeth Next to You by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
The Nation by Roy Fisher
Siri as Mother by Hala Alyan
Green Burial Unsonnet by Dante Di Stefano
Mercy by Dessa
We Live We Live by Brandy Nālani McDougall
Monet Refuses the Operation by Lisel Mueller
In the House With No Doors by Sarah Kay
Water-Owl, Cuvier’s Beaked Whale by Rajiv Mohabir
English by Janel Pineda
How it Will End by Denise Duhamel
I Dreamed I Lived in Austin by Albert Huffstickler
Tariq Luthun’s poems
Safia Elhilo’s new poems! Here!
UNHEARD EULOGY by May Ameri
HELP by Aprotim Cory Bhowmik
Acceptance Speech After Setting the World Record in Goosebumps by Andrea Gibson
The End of Poetry by Ada Limón
i have an irrational fear of spiders by Charlie Getter
You believed only a girl born of dandelion can be ferocious by Purvi Shah
Between midnight and eternity by Kettly Mars
Screenplay by Harryette Mullen
Solstice Re-pot by Shailja Patel
The neurologist gives us permission by Seema Reza
Greenness by Angelina Weld Grimké
Summer Haibun by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
LET THE LAST THING BE SONG by Hannah Fries
The World Is A Beautiful Place by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Why Bother by Sean Thomas Dougherty
Amen by James Baldwin
River by C.T. Salazar
Thinking about “The Little Mermaid” in the Waiting Room of the Otolaryngology Department by Arianna Monet
The Chilean Forest by Pablo Neruda
I Sit Beside The Fire And Think by J R R Tolkien
& When They Come for Me (Reprise) by Golden
Ekphrasis On “The New York Times” Headline “Understanding the Middle East Through the Animal Kingdom” by Emily Khilfeh
The Hills are Writing by Isha Camara
The First Rule of Buoyancy by Ollie Schminkey
Child’s Play by Anagha Smrithi
who can still be themselves these days? by Yrsa Daley-Ward
And out of the ashes by Farah Habad
what the hills know by Anagha Smrithi
Painblank by Daniel Borzutzky
My Whole Life I Was Trained To Deny Myself by Eugenia Leigh
Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying by Noor Hindi
The Jungle by Carrie Fountain
Heavy by Hieu Minh Nguyen
Be Holding by Ross Gay
Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish
The News by Marie Howe
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot
An Agony. As Now. by Amiri Baraka
Part of Eve’s Discussion by Marie Howe
The Pomegranate by Eavan Boland
Gretel in Darkness by Louise Glück
Becoming Moss by Ella Frears
Red Brocade by Naomi Shihab Nye
Girls Who Never Die by Safia Elhillo
This is a Hymn by Lorna Goodison
Dear Bryan Wynter by WS Graham
The Deer by Terrance Hayes
Invisible Fish by Joy Harjo
Give It Up by Franz Kafka & Sticks by George Saunders (flash fiction, but both so good)
Ars Poetica by Kenyatta Rogers
I was built by inherited hungers. This is not a poem that names them by Kimberly Blaeser
Dear Life & The Bees Have Been Cancelled by Maya C. Popa
Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden
The Leash by Ada Limón
Hope Is A Woman Who Has Lost Her Fear by Alice Walker
If You Come Softly by Audre Lorde
Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard by Kay Ryan
the apocalypse by Devyn Springer
The Cure for What Ails You by Cameron Awkward-Rich
Swamp Deer & Cloud Forest (scroll to the second poem!) by Pascale Petit
Book Recommendations
I’ve read a lottttt of books, but these are a few of my favourites so far! More to come.
I also wish to say that these books brought me to a new depth in some way—I’m not necessarily endorsing everything written in each one or the entirety of the author’s views/work. As in life, we almost always don’t agree/align with 100% of what someone has to say (or write). 🧡
The Way It Turned Out by Herant Katchadourian
Guilt by Herant Katchadourian
Decolonizing Therapy by Jennifer Mullan
Apeirogon by Column McCann
The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill
Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle by Angelia Davis
A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins
To Shake the Sleeping Self by Jed Jenkins
Like Streams to the Ocean by Jed Jenkins
The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop by Felicia Rose Chavez
Read This To Get Smarter by Blair Imani
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
All About Love by bell hooks
On Trails by Robert Moor
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
Her First American by Lore Segal
Smoke Hole by Martin Shaw
Monstress by Lysley Tenorio
Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
Light Boxes by Shane Jones
AfricanFuturism (Anthology edited by Wole Talabi)
Elvis and Me by Patricia Beaulieu Presley
Everything All At Once by Steph Catudal
Reading My Father by Alexandra Styron
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennet
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
The Selected Works of Audre Lorde (both poetry & prose)
I’m Judging You by Luvvie Ajayi
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
The Source of Self Regard by Toni Morrison
The Measure of Our Lives by Toni Morrison
Embrace Yoga’s Roots by Susanna Barkataki
Turtles All The Way Down by John Green
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
1984 by George Orwell
The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Passing by Nella Larsen
Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
There I Am by Ruthie Lindsey
The Interpreter by Suki Kim
The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George
We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Green Lights by Matthew McConaughey
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
Idaho by Emily Ruskovich
The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman
Figuring by Maria Popova
Hunting By Stars by Cherie Dimaline
Be Holding by Ross Gay
Girls Who Never Die by Safia Elhillo
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Note: Cover photo taken & shared by the wonderful Lida Pavlova (@lidapavlova_magic on Instagram)