My Favourite Poets and Poetry Books
Kate Baer - What Kind of Woman, and the upcoming How About Now - Kate Baer writes about motherhood, marriage, and selfhood with a clarity that feels like someone finally saying the quiet part out loud. Her poems are short, sharp, and devastatingly honest—the kind you'll screenshot and send to friends.
Maggie Smith - Good Bones - This collection is anchored by its title poem, which went viral for good reason—it captures the bittersweet work of trying to make the world bearable for the people we love. I also loved Maggie’s memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful.
Joy Sullivan - Instructions for Travelling West - Sullivan's debut is a meditation on landscape and what it means to keep moving forward. Her poems feel like they were written in transit.
Mary Oliver - Devotions - If you've never read Mary Oliver, start here. This retrospective spans fifty years of her work, offering her luminous observations on nature, attention, and living deliberately.
Ada Limon - The Carrying - Limón writes about bodies, desire, loss, and longing with a generosity that feels rare. The Carrying grapples with what it means to want something—a child, a life, a future—and what happens when that wanting goes unfulfilled.
The Poetry Pharmacy Collection - Think of this as your literary medicine cabinet. Compiled by poet William Sieghart, it prescribes poems for every emotional ailment—heartbreak, anxiety, boredom, joy. There are three in the series and I love them all!