We here at Philly 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.
Killing Spree, Jorie Graham
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication Date: May 26, 2026
Format: Hardcover / eBook
In a review of her first book, Hybrids of Plants and Ghosts (1980), The New York Times heralded Jorie Graham as a “poet of large ambitions and reckless music.” In the fifteen collections that have followed, she has remade the lyric’s ability to capture our recklessly disintegrating and accelerating daily realities. In Killing Spree, perhaps the most unflinching book of her long career, Graham looks at how the human spirit—in the face of everything that threatens it—navigates the rapids of extreme change. These newly spare poems explore, with exquisite formal precision, how we might remain intact in the face of aberrant conditions set to destroy our world. Could we lose our humanity, these poems ask. Can it be taken from us, Will we surrender it without resistance?
Extraordinary and haunting, Killing Spree reads like a survival manual guiding us deftly through the cataracts of a runaway climate, tipping-point violence, and out-of-control technology, into a terrain where a defiant, powerful imagination (and love) of the world reveals itself. Here is a poet truly at the height of her powers.
Jorie Graham is the author of sixteen collections of poems. Her poetry has been widely translated and has been the recipient of numerous awards, among them the Pulitzer Prize, the Forward Prize (UK), the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the International Nonino Prize, and the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress. She lives in Massachusetts and is Boylston Chair Emerita at Harvard University.
Air, Daniel Halpern
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Publication Date: May 26, 2026
Format: Paperback
Cinematic, nostalgic, and unabashedly raw, Daniel Halpern’s tenth collection, Air, hungers for the entirety of human experience. A mythic quotidian is recounted through rich and often confessional exposition: the love of a father for his daughter, of dear people and places, of curious insects and birds. Musing unapologetically on themes intimate and wistful, Halpern writes to French actresses, old lovers, a pot of stew, insomnia, and to friends past and present, sharing lessons of the literary world. As he reminisces on once-realities and questions his own observations—the duplicity of memory—these poems transcend form, the world presenting itself anew. Halpern is a literary icon, and in Air he proves that poetry is quite literally all around us.
Daniel Halpern is a poet, publisher, and the founder of Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. He was the co-founder, along with Paul Bowles, of the literary magazine Antaeus, which he launched while living in Morocco and edited for over 25 years. He has written nine poetry collections and edited over 15 books and anthologies. He is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Furthermore, Halpern has taught at The New School, Columbia University, and Princeton University. He is currently based in New York City and Princeton, New Jersey.
Faithful Error, Sarah Louise Garrido
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Publication Date: June 1, 2026
Format: Paperback / eBook
Exploring the tension between freedom and fidelity, Faithful Error meditates on life’s most sacred and often difficult loves—romantic, parental, familial, and spiritual—against a backdrop of environmental unease. These poems, rich in natural imagery, trace an emotional journey from intimate contemplation to transcendent questioning, grappling with the value of devotion in a world seemingly designed to extinguish hope. A palpable emotional intensity simmers beneath the restrained language, mirroring the manuscript’s central dynamic: a yearning to err, yet ultimately finding freedom in a return—however complicated—to faith.
Sarah Louise Garrido is a poet and creative director. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Curator Magazine, Zocalo Public Square, Solum, and elsewhere. A finalist for the Yale Series of Younger Poets and winner of the Academy of American Poets College Prize, she holds an MFA from Saint Mary’s College of California. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two children.
Split / Game of Little Deaths, Réka Nyitrai
Publisher: Piżama Press
Publication Date: May 27, 2026
Format: Paperback
Réka Nyitrai’s newest book, Split / Game of Little Deaths, is a cyclical and symmetrical surrealist offering. A two-for-one collection, one side is a hybrid and experimental work blending Nyitrai’s real diary entries with imagined diaries of surrealist artists Unica Zürn (1916-1970), Hans Bellmer (1902-1975), and Francesca Woodman (1958-1981). Both Zürn and Woodman died tragically due to mental illness, one in Paris and one in New York City, while Bellmer, the partner of Zürn, died five years later and was buried next to her. The result of Split is a chorus of voices, coming and going from psychiatric hospitals, channeling life and death, sickness and recovery, in a whirlwind of timelines and perspectives.
The other, Game of Little Deaths, is a dizzying yet accommodating dream world mixing free verse and prose poetry. A mystifying landscape where anything can happen. While Split is more diaristic in its approach, Game of Little Deaths comes from a place of deep imagination and creative escape. “My poems afford an opportunity to disrupt the everyday with the unusual,” writes Réka.
Réka Nyitrai is a spell, a sparrow, a lioness’s tongue — a bird nest in a pool of dusk. A Romanian-Hungarian poet, she learned English (her primary language of writing) later in life, moving fluently between prose poems, haiku, and free verse, often channeling the feminist surrealist currents of Leonora Carrington, Aase Berg, and Aglaja Veteranyi. In 2020, she released a bilingual (Spanish and English) collection of haiku known as While Dreaming Your Dreams (Mano Ya Mano Books) which received a Touchstone Distinguished Books Award. She then released her debut full-length poetry collection, Moon Flogged, in 2024 through Broken Sleep Books, and recently released a chapbook through Ethel Zine called With a Swan’s Nest on Her Back.
John’s Table, Lesle Lewis
Publisher: Piżama Press
Publication Date: May 27, 2026
Format: Paperback
John’s Table is Lewis’ sixth full-length book of prose poems. Arranged in 45 monostich pieces, all with single-word titles, this collection showcases a poet who, after more than 20 years of releasing books into the world, is an artist who continues to master her craft. John’s Table spotlight’s the New Hampshire-based author’s writing in peak form, with her lines moving fluidly between feeling like napkin notes and fragments scribbled upon waking from a dream. This braiding of daily life (“There’s a noise in the woodshed. / The unknowable is everywhere.”) with magical moments (“She laughs her head off and hands it to me.”) results in an intimate snapshot of a poet fully inhabiting her abilities. Shifting between the “I,” the “you,” and the “we,” John’s Table feels simultaneously personal and communal, connected to and estranged from the world surrounding the writer. Full of loss and worry yet joy and hope, with an overall unease of our excessive use of technology, the poems tangle big-picture questions with internal confusions, internal reflections with collective uncertainties. Reading John’s Table feels like flipping through a notepad or watching the news cycle next to a typewriter. Laugh-out-loud funny, heartbreaking, tender, cheerful, and poignant all at once.
Lesle Lewis is the author of six full-length collections of poems, including her debut collection, Small Boat, which was the winner of the 2002 Iowa Poetry Prize. She’s released two books through Alice James Books, one book with Cleveland State University Poetry Center, and, most recently, Rainy Days on the Farm through Fence Books (2019). She has additionally released two chapbooks through Factory Hollow Press (It’s Rothko in Winter or Belgium in 2012 and Hydrogen in 2025). She also has a seventh full-length poetry collection arriving later in 2026. Her poems have appeared in American Letters and Commentary, Northern New England Review, Hotel Amerika, Mississippi Review, The Cincinnati Review, Green Mountains Review, Barrow Street Mudfish, LIT, Pool, jubilat, notnostrums, Sentence, Bat City, Common Place, and Mercurius. She lives in the rough New Hampshire woods with the rest of the trees.
Mantras of the Moon, Srijani Mitra
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Publication Date: May, 2026
Format: Paperback
Mantras of the Moon is a luminous collection of poems born from the desire to explore the self, memory, and Indian heritage. These poems weave together psychology, mythology, desire, and divine destinations from Murshidabad’s museums to the quiet radiance of Saraswati Pujo. Inspired by the encouragement of editors and strengthened by love, this book is a testament to introspection and emotional truth.
Srijani Mitra is a writer based in India with works published in North Dakota Quarterly, ItGetsBetter, South Seattle Emerald and Indian Literature by Sahitya Akademi. She has spoken at Mangalore Lit Fest and Shoolini literary festival. She has conducted workshops across universities and colleges of India including IIT Guwahati and IIT Dharwad.
Don’t see a poetry title published between 5/26 and 6/1 here? Contact us to let us know!
Contents
Chapbook Poem: Slow Burn by Evan Wang
“The concept of personifying a slow burn deeply resonated with who I thought myself to be—a slow burn, love flickering around me.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for April 2026, “Slow Burn” by Evan Wang, along with a few words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: She wants shimmering scales by Nicole Alston Zdeb
“The nexus of the erotic, the social, and the body felt relevant to what I was experiencing at the end of the 20th Century. There are glimmers of personal lore as well…” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for April 2026, “She wants shimmering scales” from The End of Welcome by Nicole Alston Zdeb, along with a few words from the poet.
“I wanted to explore how time was registered not only by the calendar and clock, but also in the various utilitarian tasks of my mother’s life.” Read three poems by Ron Mohring, our first biweekly poet of the Spring 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Fuse.”
Three Poems by Andrew Pelham-Burn
“Children in these circumstances are deprived of love at a formative stage and learn to immediately behave like adults without the benefit of the learning path of childhood.” Read three poems by Andrew Pelham-Burn, our second biweekly poet of the Spring 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Conkers.”
A Conversation with John deSouza
“Language is a powerful tool and can do great harm both to ourselves and to those most close to us when used cruelly or selfishly.” Poet John deSouza discusses his chapbook, This Rough Magic, his creative process, and the influence of John Ashbery in this interview with editor Danielle McMahon.
Chapbook Poem: from Stray Hunter’s Bullet by Lance Le Grys
“…what interested me was the idea of a character who didn’t do what he was capable of, not because of external circumstances, but because of either a lack of will or a seemingly perverse one.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for May 2026, from Stray Hunter’s Bullet by Lance Le Grys, along with a few words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: Love does not exist by Maria Giesbrecht
“This poem was inspired by a dream… I had this strange feeling when I woke up that it meant something more and started writing a poem to see if anything would reveal itself to me.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for May 2026, “Love does not exist” from A Little Feral by Maria Giesbrecht, along with a few words from the poet.
“After a loss in my family, I discovered one grieves for both the living who hide their pain and for the dead who sleep in silence.” Read two poems by Patricia Wallace, our third biweekly poet of the Spring 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Fox.”
May ’26: New Staff, New Calls, New(ish) Name
Editor Aiden Hunt provides information about changes to PCR’s name, format, and staff in this editor’s note, which also contains links to our Spring calls for submissions.
“I kept thinking about how easily adults learn to stop seeing what’s right in front of them, especially when they’re somewhere between one country and another, neither arriving nor leaving.” Read four poems by Nivara Lune, our fourth biweekly poet of the Spring 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Notes Toward an Elsewhere.”
The Lines of Landscape: on The Catastrophes by Marie Scarles
“Scarles’ choice of title points away from place, and toward the book’s deeper and more powerful offering: a changed way of seeing, one of the hallmarks of any successful poetics.” Read the full chapbook review by contributing editor, D.W. Baker.
“Every time I plucked a few of the little orange sun sugars to take inside, their garden smell lingered on my fingers. It was almost enough to just sit with that scent…” Read three poems by Kait Quinn, our fifth biweekly poet of the Spring 2026 issue, along with a few words about “The Tomato.”
Chapbook Poem: Superbloom by Joyce Schmid
“That June, flowers bloomed everywhere in Northern California—as if to honor her, to celebrate her life. This poem is an attempt to accept the fact that she is really gone.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for June 2026, from Superbloom by Joyce Schmid, along with a few words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: The Well by Robin Becker
“Allowing flickering sentiments and images to play against one another, I replicated one form of consciousness. A surprising aspect of the poem: the sudden appearance of figures of government.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for June 2026, “The Well” from Midsummer Count by Robin Becker, along with a few words from the poet.