The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop

Editors: Kevin Coval, Quraysh Ali Lansana, and Nate Marshall

Publisher: Haymarket Books (2015)

Contributors: Benjamin Alfaro, Lemon Andersen, Fatimah Asghar, Aziza Barnes, Joshua Bennett, Tara Betts, Sarah Blake, Reed Adair Bobroff, Roger Bonair-Agard, Jericho Brown, Mahogany L. Browne, Jason Carney, Franny Choi, Michael Cirelli, Kristiana Colón, Kevin Coval, Kyle Dargan, Mayda Del Valle, Denizen Kane, Joel Dias-Porter, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Mitchell L. H. Douglas, Safia Elhillo, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Eve Ewing, Tarfia Faizullah, Adam Faulkner, Camonghne Felix, t'ai freedom ford, Krista Franklin, Aracelis Girmay, Idris Goodwin, Suheir Hammad, Aleshea Harris, Alysia Nicole Harris, francine j. harris, Chinaka Hodge, Randall Horton, Paolo Javier, Brittany Black Rose Kapri, Douglas Kearney, Nile Lansana, Onam Lansana, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Malcom London, Mario, Nate Marshall, Adrian Matejka, Marty McConnell,  E'mon McGee, Tony Medina, Ciara Miller, Michael Mlekoday, Jessica Care Moore, Tracie Morris, John Murillo, Angel Nafis, José Olivarez, Angel Pantoja, Morgan Parker,  Willie Perdomo, Paul Martinez Pompa, Joy Priest, Lynne Procope, John Rodriguez, Patrick Rosal, Jacob Saenz, Aaron Samuels, Evie Shockley, Danez Smith, Nadia Sulayman, Enzo Silon Surin, Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, Kush Thompson, Samantha Thornhill, Ocean Vuong, Marcus Wicker, Steven Willis, Jamila Woods, avery r. young

Hip-Hop is the largest youth culture in the history of the planet rock. This is the first poetry anthology by and for the Hip-Hop generation. 

It has produced generations of artists who have revolutionized their genre(s) by applying the aesthetic innovations of the culture. The BreakBeat Poets features 78 poets, born somewhere between 1961–1999, All-City and Coast-to-Coast, who are creating the next and now movement(s) in American letters. The BreakBeat Poets is for people who love Hip-Hop, for fans of the culture, for people who've never read a poem, for people who thought poems were only something done by dead white dudes who got lost in a forest, and for poetry heads. This anthology is meant to expand the idea of who a poet is and what a poem is for. The BreakBeat Poets are the scribes recording and remixing a fuller spectrum of experience of what it means to be alive in this moment. The BreakBeat Poets are a break with the past and an honoring of the tradition(s), an undeniable body expanding the canon for the fresher.