Here is the July edition of The Poetry Shelf, our suggested poetry assortment, compiled by Michelle Halket of Central Avenue Publishing.
Welcome to the July edition of The Poetry Shelf! This summer is all about Homer--no, not my favorite Homer (Simpson)--but the Greek poet. Imagine being dead for 2,700 years and your movie adaptation drops, so suddenly people are buying every edition of the Odyssey and the Iliad they can get their hands on. Bro really played the long game. 💀
So yeah, there's a baker's dozen of those two books on the bestseller list so I say, just pick your favorite and showcase it. But once you do that, if you haven't already, then I would lean in to two very successful launches this week: The Love of My Life by Whitney Hanson and I Still Believe in Miracles by Lucas Jones, both of which would be considered to be in the Viral or Accessible segment as they each share their work on socials.
(Oh, and while I'm talking about classics, many booksellers put this segment in a different section of the store, not necessarily near poetry. Given how popular it is now, I might suggest trying to see if you could move it closer to your poetry books to see if you can get some cross pollination.)
If you're looking to show off something else, pick up the 2023 release by A.H. Jerriod Avant, Muscadine, which is having a moment, or the new release by Fatimah Asghar, Daughter of the Mountains.
I'm electing to show off some titles that would be ideal for Back to School displays. I chose these because of how diverse they are and generally how much these poets are taught and/or talked about. There're poet laureates (Sze) and more accessible poetry (Gorman) as well as books that might tie in well to history (Trethewey) or sociology (Choi) courses.
As always, everything I put on these lists are just suggestions meant to spark ideas of your own. Pick and choose as best fits your store!