Adrian Matejka

Apr 19, 2024 | poets.org | Adrian Matejka |Deborah A. Miranda |Nate Klug |Didn’T Tilt

Find and share the perfect poems. Until around sundown, the survivinglilies in the yard stay wide open,like the window of a car passingon a hot day. No music from the flowers,but they smell like somebody’s fragrantsoap unwrapped on a dish edgedwith daisies. All those smells expressingthemselves haphazardly like a bandtrying to tune up.

May 29, 2023 | poetryfoundation.org | Adrian Matejka

This month, we celebrate the birthdays of Gwendolyn Brooks and Lucille Clifton and remember the transition of June Jordan. For Poem of the Day, I have selected a series of poems from Black women and femme-identifying poets and have also included a supplementary list of poems from women of the African diaspora at the end of this post. These poems illustrate intimate spaces of care and cultivate a commitment to radical change.

Feb 24, 2023 | poets.org | Adrian Matejka |Jeffrey Bean |Karen Solie |Noah Falck

—after “Trumpet,” Jean-Michel Basquiatthe broken sprawl & crawlof Basquiat’s paints, the thin cleft          of villainous pigments wrapping each frame like the syntax          in somebody else’s relaxedexplanation of lateness: what had          happened was.

Feb 20, 2023 | kirkusreviews.com | Adrian Matejka |Colleen Hoover

JACK JOHNSON AND THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURY illustrated by Youssef Daoudi ; by Adrian Matejka ‧ Illustrator Daoudi and poet Matejka interpret the life and times of Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight boxing champion, framing their graphic novel around his 1910 championship bout in Reno, Nevada, and covering his rise in sport and culture and his undoing by the virulence of American racism.