Scorched Earth

by Tiana Clark

Overview

The striking sophomore poetry collection from the award-winning author of the “beautiful, vulnerable, honest” (Ross Gay, New York Times bestselling author) I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood.

Dive between the borders of ruined and radical love with this lyrical poetry collection that explores topics as expansive as divorce, the first Black Bachelorette, and the art world. Stanzas shift between reverence to irreverence as they take us on a journey through institutional and historical pains alongside sensuality and queer, Black joys.

From a generational voice that “earns a place among the pantheon of such emerging black poets as Eve L. Ewing, Nicole Sealey, and Airea D. Matthews” (Booklist, starred review), Scorched Earth is a transcendent anthology for our times.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781668052082
Publisher:	Washington Square Press
Publication date:	03/04/2025
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128

About the Author

Tiana Clark is the author of the poetry collections Scorched Earth; I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood, which won the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize; and Equilibrium, which won the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. Clark’s other honors include a Pushcart Prize, a Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and Tennessee State University, where she studied Africana and women’s studies. She is the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College. Find out more at TianaClark.com.

Editorial Reviews

"'I still want joy in the end,' Tiana Clark writes in Scorched Earth, her searing, expansive new collection of poems. This book begins with an end—the speaker’s divorce—and the poems unpack what it means to have outlived the life you’d expected to have. 'If my body be a long poem,' Clark writes, 'then I want it to go wherever it needs.' These are poems of black joy, queer love, and radical acceptance of the self. Scorched Earth is a hell of a book."

—Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful

From the Publisher