Derrick Harriell

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.

The percussive poems of Stripper in Wonderland move from birth to death, funk to hip-hop, and racism to religion as Derrick Harriell explores the life of a modern black man transplanted from the American Midwest to the Deep South.Harriell summons the ghosts of the past as he deals with the realities of the present. He carefully winds images and words together to produce powerful, often graphic, poems that inform our view of one another as they punch through our assumptions.