Come Kingdom - (Southern Messenger Poets) by Derrick Harriell (Paperback)

About the Book

"In Come Kingdom, Derrick Harriell chronicles a Black man's journey toward an ever-elusive American Dream. These poems are anchored in the trenches of personal crossroads ranging from child conception to substance abuse and racism. Throughout the book, the Black male psyche and body are continuously placed on trial, examined, and reexamined. Whenever reconciliation seems to be near, conflict finds a way to disrupt a family's picket-fence dreams. Written in four sections, the collection pays homage to various Black musical icons-including Marvin Gaye, Whitney Houston, Tupac Shakur, and Nipsey Hussle. With spirited vulnerability and gritty musical lyricism, Harriell reveals the stakes and hauntings of relentless generational traumas. A tour de force of outcry and courage, Come Kingdom confronts our ever-changing social, political, and musical climate. But more intimately, it follows a speaker and his partner's desperate attempts to become parents again"--

Book Synopsis

Derrick Harriell's new book, Come Kingdom, chronicles a Black man's journey toward an ever-elusive American Dream with poems anchored in the trenches of personal crossroads ranging from child conception to substance abuse and racism. The collection follows a male speaker as he and his partner family plan, hoping to provide their son with a sibling. Their troubles burst through in bold poems that incorporate both medical and mental hurdles. At the same time, it pays homage to Black musical icons such as Marvin Gaye, Whitney Houston, Tupac Shakur, and Nipsey Hussle.

With spirited vulnerability and gritty lyricism, Harriell reveals the stakes and hauntings of relentless generational traumas. A tour de force of outcry and courage, Come Kingdom confronts shifting social, political, and musical climates. On a more intimate level, it also follows a couple's desperate attempts to become parents again.

Review Quotes

"A mind-blowing experience--a tender reflection of one poet's life laid bare in the public sphere."--Randall Horton

"In Come Kingdom, Derrick Harriell constructs a pulsating and provocative world of flesh, memory, and fantasy, where the celestial and the purgatorial come face to face."--Patrick Rosal

"Rich, dynamic, full of invention and wordplay, Harriell's poetry documents those kingdoms we are given, and the kingdoms we create."--January Gill O'Neil

"What a book. It hurts, it redeems, it does not blink."--Catherine Pierce

About the Author

Derrick Harriell is the Ottilie Schillig Associate Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Mississippi. His previous collections of poems include Stripper in Wonderland, Cotton, and Ropes, winner of the 2014 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Book Award.