We here at Philly Poetry Chapbook Review love poetry, whether it’s in chapbooks or full-length collections. We have a hunch that our readers do, too. Every Tuesday, we publish an update about what full-length poetry titles we know are releasing in the following week.
Information, including product descriptions, is provided by the publisher and not a critical judgment. If we cover the book on this site, links will be included.
Extant, Jenny L. Davis
Publisher: Michigan State University Press
Publication Date: January 1, 2026
Format: Paperback / eBook
Extant confronts the many ways in which Native Americans continue to be associated with the distant past and imagined, even today, as more animal than human. For more than a century, anthropologists, museum guides, and high school teachers have described Native American bodies, cultures, and languages as “endangered” or “almost extinct.” Through a combination of blackout poems, occasional poems, and free verse, award-winning poet Jenny L. Davis rewrites the narrative of what it means to exist, to live in a present shaped by colonial violence that emphasizes the power of survival.
The second poetry collection by award-winning author Jenny L. Davis (Chickasaw), Extant confronts the many ways in which Native Americans continue to be associated with the distant past and imagined, even today, as more animal than human. For more than a century, anthropologists, museum guides, and high school teachers have described Native American bodies, cultures, and languages as “endangered” or “almost extinct.” Through a combination of blackout poems, occasional poems, and free verse, Davis rewrites the narrative of what it means to exist, to live in a present shaped by colonial violence that emphasizes the power of survival. Drawing on online question forums, scientific studies, kitschy decor, and the day-to-day musings of an Indigiqueer Native woman, Extant stages encounters of Native survival within a world full of stars, cicadas, earthworms, and moss.
Jenny L. Davis is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and an associate professor of anthropology and American Indian studies at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, where she is the director of the American Indian Studies Program and a founding co-director of the Center for Indigenous Science. Her research has been published in the Annual Review of Anthropology, American Anthropologist, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Gender and Language, Language & Communication, Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, American Journal of Biological Anthropology, and The Routledge Companion to Public Humanities Scholarship, among others. Her creative work has most recently been published in American Indian Culture and Research Journal; Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism; SAPIENS; Transmotion; ANMLY; Santa Ana River Review; Broadsided; North Dakota Quarterly; Yellow Medicine Review; As/Us; and Raven Chronicles Journal.
without the frills, Gigi Bella
Publisher: Button Poetry
Publication Date: January 6, 2026
Format: Paperback
Dive into Hollywood ‘without the frills’ with Gigi Bella’s exploration of the rising TV and film industry in her home state of New Mexico. Bella invites the reader into her world as a chicana woman and emerging actress. With an earnest and urgent voice, Bella dissects the experiences and treatment of Hispanic people societally and in TV and film–juxtaposed with the eagerness with which the industry moves in on Hispanic communities in New Mexico. without the frills is a beautiful and poignant look at the real people who make entertainment possible–the sorrows, joys, and messy complexities of real lives. So grab your popcorn and prepare to laugh, cry, and rage with Gigi Bella’s dynamic, moving collection.
gigi bella has been ranked the tenth best woman poet in the world (WOWPS 2017), the two time Project X Bronx Poetry Champion and a National Poetry Slam Champion. She currently has 100,000+ views on Youtube with mega poetry conglomerate, Button Poetry. Her book, big feelings, is available through Game Over Books and is a Small Press Distribution Bestseller. Her one woman show of the same title made its international debut at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. She will make her feature film debut in 2025 with A24 in Ari Aster’s forthcoming work.
Antidespairant, Natalka Maryanchak
Publisher: Kulturalis
Publication Date: January 6, 2026
Format: Hardcover
Ukrainian poet Natalka Maryanchak’s Antidespairant (Відчаєспинне) is a powerful expression of defiance and hope in the face of Russian aggression, written in Kharkiv during the first 365 days of Putin’s invasion – the latest phase of a conflict that has raged between the two countries for four centuries. Composed under fire, Antidespairant – a personal diary in poetic form – is at once a prayer for her own people, a curse on the enemy, and a panegyric to those struggling to defend their homeland. Complemented by Kostiantyn Zorkin’s arresting and evocative graphics, this is an unflinching account of hope preserved in the most challenging of circumstances.
Natalka Maryanchak was born in 1981 in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and studied at the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. Her publications include the non-fiction Lullaby of the 21st Century: What Lulls You to Sleep, the album and book Third Children, the poetry collection Stop.Ua and art book Crossfires. In addition to writing, Natalka runs a project on Ukrainian radio station Nakipilo called Unhurried Morning, aimed at protecting the mental health of her fellow citizens with a view to rebuilding the state after eventual victory over the invader. Kostiantyn Zorkin was born in 1985, also in Kharkiv, and studied Culturology at the Kharkiv Academy of Culture. His output spans performance art, installations, puppet theater, graphics, sculpture, land art and more. Among his most his important works of the last four years are the project Protective Layer, the puppet show Giraffe Mons and illustrations for Adela Knapova’s book Bloody Compote. In his work, he uses natural materials (wood, metal, ink, paper) and traditional manual techniques associated with their production. He reinterprets the magical and mythological function of art by creating his own system of signs and symbols. Natalka and Kostiantyn both continue to live in Kharkiv, one of the cities hardest hit by the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Birthstones in the Province of Mercy, Bo Hee Moon
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Publication Date: January 6, 2026
Format: Paperback
“Blurry eyes mean a longing for home,” writes Bo Hee Moon in her prize-winning collection, “but we’re unsure what home means.” A South Korean adoptee raised in the United States, the poet reaches for language to confront the complex, myriad emotions that accompany understanding identity and belonging after transnational, cross-cultural adoption.
Through verse both innocent and wise, the speaker searches for the memory of a birth mother who passed before they could reunite, aided only by “my birth chart” and “this tiny, / careful body you gave me.” To reimagine reunion, she creates a reality in which she can look into the “fragile depth” of her birth mother’s eyes, envision her parents meeting among spring azaleas and rice paddies, and gently cleanse her mother’s dying body. Transcending boundaries between generations, between life and death, she learns how to transform, how to forge an identity of her own, declaring, “I am changing, completely, / behind a rice paper door.”
With poems that serve as our speaker’s “loyal companion // in the burnt / pine and dawn,” Birthstones in the Province of Mercy illuminates the language that nourishes the delicate and vital connection between an adoptee and her origins.
A South Korean adoptee, Bo Hee Moon is the author of one previous book of poems, Omma, Sea of Joy and Other Astrological Signs, which she published under another name with Tinderbox Editions in 2021. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, swamp pink, The Margins, and other journals. She is a PhD student in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Houston, where she has received the Inprint Brown Foundation Fellowship. Moon currently lives in Houston, and you can find her at boheemoon.com
It Looks Like a Man, Heather McHugh
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Publication Date: January 6, 2026
Format: Paperback
Heather McHugh’s new collection of poems joins her fourteen previously published volumes of poetry, essays, and translation (one a Pulitzer Prize finalist and another designated a Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly). With her 2010 MacArthur Fellowship she funded a program of restorative getaways for unpaid family caregivers. An abiding theme throughout McHugh’s work has been the essential muteness of individual experience as it is remarked from greatening distances of time, space, or feeling. In view of that gulf between experience and expression, the words of characters here suggest the many ways a human being can be said to look.
Heather McHugh is an American poet notable for Dangers, To the Quick, Eyeshot and Muddy Matterhorn. McHugh was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in the US and a Griffin Poetry Prize in Canada, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
A Day of It, Michael Chitwood
Publisher: LSU Press
Publication Date: January 8, 2026
Format: Paperback / eBook
A Day of It, the ninth book of poems by Michael Chitwood, is a fanfare for the commonplace and the oft overlooked, both among places and people. In the spirit of Seamus Heaney, Chitwood’s poetry seeks the whereabouts of the “thin places” in the everyday—an abandoned barn, a weedy roadside, even an antique sewing machine. The dwindling tobacco fields and shuttered textile mills of Chitwood’s native Appalachia bring to bear both personal and historical revelations. The complicated history of the region entwines with the personal in sonically rich lyrics. This is no Appalachian elegy, but Appalachian homage.
The poems in A Day of It pay people and place their greatest compliment: attention.
Michael Chitwood’s work has received the L. E. Phillabaum Award from LSU Press, the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing, and the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Poetry.
The Box of Torrone, John J. Trause
Publisher: Unsolicited Press
Publication Date: January 6, 2026
Format: Paperback / eBook
The Box of Torrone is a singular collection of poetry that unwraps six distinct flavors of Italian nougat—each one linked to a different city in Italy, each one a doorway to memory, place, and emotion. Inspired by a real box of torrone gifted by the author’s beloved Italian aunt, this book blends the sensual with the historical, the cultural with the deeply personal. Over the years, these poems have ripened into a rich mosaic of Italian landscapes, tastes, and traditions, inviting readers to savor a poetic journey steeped in love, nostalgia, and aesthetic wonder. The Box of Torrone is both intimate and expansive—a passport for the senses, perfect for anyone longing to travel by tongue, heart, and verse.
John J. Trause, the Director of Oradell Public Library, is the author of Why Sing? (Sensitive Skin Press, 2017), a book of traditional and experimental poems; Picture This: For Your Eyes and Ears (Dos Madres Press, 2016), a book of poems on art, film, and photography; Exercises in High Treason (great weather for MEDIA, 2016), a book of fictive translations, found poems, and manipulated texts; Eye Candy for Andy (13 Most Beautiful… Poems for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, Finishing Line Press, 2013); Inside Out, Upside Down, and Round and Round (Nirala Publications, 2012); Seriously Serial (Poets Wear Prada, 2007; rev. ed. 2014); and Latter-Day Litany (Éditions élastiques, 1996), the latter staged Off Broadway.
Echo Chamber, Renee Norman, Carl Leggo
Publisher: Inanna Publications
Publication Date: October, 2025
Format: Paperback
Echo Chamber is a poetic love letter to the late Carl Leggo, Norman’s longtime friend and collaborator. Their previous collection, Hearing Echoes, was a powerful duet exploring family, memory, and identity through two distinct yet entwined voices. Following Leggo’s passing, Norman returns to the page alone, writing in conversation with absence. These poems are tender, searching, and filled with echoes of shared language, enduring love, and creative kinship.
Renee Norman, Ph.D., is an award-winning poet, a writer, and a teacher. She completed her doctorate at the University of British Columbia in 1999. Her dissertation, House of Mirrors: Performing Autobiograph(icall)y in Language/Education, focuses on women’s autobiographical writings, including her own, and on autobiography in language/literacy education, and was published as a book by Peter Lang Publishers, New York, in 2001. Renee’s poetry, stories, and articles have been published widely in many literary and academic journals, such as Canadian Woman Studies/les cahiers de la femme, Prairie Journal, Freefall, and English Quarterly, as well as in anthologies and newspapers. She has received poetry and nonfiction prizes for her work. Renee is one of twelve Canadian woman poets whose poetry is featured in The Missing Line, published by Inanna Publications in 2004. Currently Renee teaches in a Fine Arts program in Vancouver School District. She lives in Coquitlam, BC, with her three daughters Sara, Rebecca, and Erin, and her husband Don.
Carl Leggo lived, taught, and wrote in the Vancouver area until his death in 2019. Drawing from his memories of an adventurous childhood in Newfoundland, he wove humorous, heartfelt tales into poetic ruminations that formed the first of his many published books. After studying in various cities across Canada and earning his PhD, Carl moved to Vancouver in 1990 and began a decades-long career in the Faculty of Education at UBC, where he left a lasting impression on students and colleagues alike. When he passed away, a memorial held at UBC drew a crowd of people whose lives he had so meaningfully touched.More than anything, Carl was a husband, father, and grandfather whose family still misses and thinks of him every day. His profound presence and creative spirit live on in his writing.
The Laughing Calvinist, Christina E. Petrides
Publisher: Kelsay Books
Publication Date: October, 2025
Format: Paperback / eBook
The Laughing Calvinist is a compilation of 93 pieces of free verse, rhyme, and other forms of poetry. The subjects range geographically from South Korea to the United States, and thematically focus on everything from sleep to consumption, teaching to exercise, romance to writing.
Born in Texas and raised in the Central Savannah River Area (CSRA) of Georgia, USA, Christina E. Petrides lived and worked on Jeju Island, Republic of Korea, 2017–2023, where she began writing poetry.
Christina’s first poetry collection was On Unfirm Terrain (Kelsay Books, 2022); The Laughing Calvinist is her second collection. Many of the pieces in each collection were first published in periodicals around the world.
Don’t see a poetry title published between 1/1 and 1/12 here? Contact us to let us know!
Contents
“Managing [my husband’s] pain became fraught in the last week of his life when he could no longer swallow the medications that had kept him comfortable…The poem explores the vulnerability and intimacy found in such a crisis.” Read five poems by Amy Riddell, our first biweekly poet of the Winter 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Reading the Body.”
Chapbook Poem: Aphasia by Robert Allen
“Ultimately this is a poem of love and recognition, of finding the right words for the right listener, to the one who listens and understands.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for January 2026, “Aphasia,” along with a few words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: The Egg of Anything by Paula Bohince
“The poem is filled with moments of ‘O’ sounds and ‘Ah’ sounds, mimicking the O of the egg and the Ah of the open jaw. I like that the poem is compact in its little form, also a bit egg-like.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for January 2026, “The Egg of Anything” from A Violence by Paula Bohince, along with a few words from the poet.
Three Poems by Abraham Aondoana
“Instead of providing any solution to the issue, the poem is ready to be open to the ambiguity that can enable doubt, tenderness, and resilience to co-exist. By so doing, it points to survival not as victory, but as endurance…” Read three poems by Abraham Aondoana, our second biweekly poet of the Winter 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Surviving a Country That is Also a Question.”