Have you ever wanted to approach poetry but weren’t sure where to start? Here at Epic Reads, we totally understand—there are so many poets and writers to choose from! There’s the classic poetry we read in school like Lord Byron and Keats and Shakespeare’s sonnets, but it doesn’t stop there. There is modern poetry that addresses ideas like feminism, illness, and immigration. Then you also have what you might think of as poetry books but are actually novels-in-verse, those beautifully written books that are so cleverly put together, you often need to read them two or three times just to catch every detail.
These poetry books and novels in verse are filled with history, love, music, and more. So select a poetry book or a novel in verse today, because you may be surprised by how much you enjoy it!
31 Poetry Books & Novels in Verse
THAT WILL TAKE YOUR BREATH AWAY
1. The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking.
But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers—especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about.
With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is invited to join her school’s slam poetry club, she doesn’t know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out. But she still can’t stop thinking about performing her poems.
2. (S)Kin by Ibi Zoboi
“Our new home with its
thick walls and locked doors
wants me to stay trapped in my skin—
but I am fury and flame.”
Fifteen-year-old Marisol is the daughter of a soucouyant. Every new moon, she sheds her skin like the many women before her, shifting into a fireball witch who must fly into the night and slowly sip from the lives of others to sustain her own. But Brooklyn is no place for fireball witches with all its bright lights, shut windows, and bolt-locked doors.… While Marisol hoped they would leave their old traditions behind when they emigrated from the islands, she knows this will never happen while she remains ensnared by the one person who keeps her chained to her magical past—her mother.
Seventeen-year-old Genevieve is the daughter of a college professor and a newly minted older half sister of twins. Her worsening skin condition and the babies’ constant wailing keep her up at night, when she stares at the dark sky with a deep longing to inhale it all. She hopes to quench the hunger that gnaws at her, one that seems to reach for some memory of her estranged mother. When a new nanny arrives to help with the twins, a family secret connecting her to Marisol is revealed, and Gen begins to find answers to questions she hasn’t even thought to ask.
But the girls soon discover that the very skin keeping their flames locked beneath the surface may be more explosive to the relationships around them than any ancient magic.
3. Estela, Undrowning by René Peña-Govea
Estela Morales is one of the only Latinas who tested into San Francisco’s most exclusive public high school. In her senior year, Estela just wants to keep her head down, eke out a passing grade from her racist Spanish teacher, and get into her dream college.
But after placing second in the Latiné Heritage Poetry Contest behind a non-Latino student, Estela is thrust into citywide debates about merit, identity, and diversity.
Things only get messier when her family is threatened with eviction. As Estela’s friends organize against bigotry and her landlady increases the pressure, Estela is suffocating and finds release only in poetry and in a breathless new romance. When tensions finally reach their breaking point, Estela must find a way to undrown the community she loves—and herself.
4. Poemhood: Our Black Revival, edited by Amber McBride, Taylor Byas, and Erica Martin
Come, claim your wings.
Lift your life above the earth,
return to the land of your father’s birth.
What exactly is it to be Black in America?
Well, for some, it’s learning how to morph the hatred placed by others into love for oneself; for others, it’s unearthing the strength it takes to continue to hold one’s swagger when multitudinous factors work to make Black lives crumble. For some, it’s gathering around the kitchen table as Grandma tells the story of Anansi the spider, while for others it’s grinning from ear to ear while eating auntie’s spectacular 7Up cake.
Black experiences and traditions are complex, striking, and vast—they stretch longer than the Nile and are four times as deep—and carry more than just unimaginable pain—there is also joy.
Featuring an all-star group of thirty-seven powerful poetic voices, including such luminaries as Kwame Alexander, James Baldwin, Ibi Zoboi, Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, and Gwendolyn Brooks, this riveting anthology depicts the diversity of the Black experience by fostering a conversation about race, faith, heritage, and resilience between fresh poets and the literary ancestors that came before them.
Edited by Taylor Byas, Erica Martin, and Coretta Scott King New Talent Award winner Amber McBride, Poemhood will simultaneously highlight the duality and nuance at the crux of so many Black experiences with poetry being the psalm constantly playing.
5. An Expanse of Blue by Kauakanilehua Mahoe Adams
Aouli Elizabeth Smith is adrift: unheard at home and an unbeliever at church, fighting her sister and losing her best friend. Overflowing with feeling, she pours her secrets and herself into her song journal when the world threatens to sweep her away. The one place she feels tied down to earth is at her Aunty Ehu’s house. Those joyous Saturdays with her extended Native Hawaiian community living in Western Washington are precious to her. Under the maple trees, the fragments of her life fit together, if only for an afternoon.
Then, an unspeakable truth about her father shatters this one perfect corner of her life.
As Aouli’s world constricts around what others wish she could be, language fails her. But when a new boy, Nalu, turns up with eyes that seem to pierce right into her soul, maybe it’s love that can give her the words to set herself free.
6. Knucklehead by Tony Keith Jr.
dear Knucklehead,
perhaps you are like me:
always figuring out if your soul and your skin
are thick enough to protect your body from sticky stones
thrown from the mouths of those who know
that spoken words have the power to spit out freedom
and break-in bones.
While society often assigns the label “knucklehead” to kids with attitude problems, this brilliant and electric poetry collection by spoken word poet and hip-hop educator Tony Keith Jr. subverts that narrow way of thinking and empathizes with young people who are misunderstood and unheard.
There are poems about the power of language to transcend the racist and homophobic constructs of a society prejudging Black boys. There are poems that serve as a salve for a world that inflicts hurt, poems that offer a beacon of hope for the curious and questioning, and poems that transform the way people love Black gay boys and men.
This is a journey of self-discovery through history, family, friendship, and falling in love. Knucklehead is a breathtaking work, full of black-and-white illustrations and unforgettable poetry that will heal, provoke, and inspire.
7. We Are All So Good at Smiling by Amber McBride
Whimsy is back in the hospital for treatment of clinical depression. When she meets a boy named Faerry, she recognizes they both have magic in the marrow of their bones. And when Faerry and his family move to the same street, the two start to realize that their lifelines may have twined and untwined many times before.
They are both terrified of the forest at the end of Marsh Creek Lane.
The Forest whispers to Whimsy. The Forest might hold the answers to the part of Faerry he feels is missing. They discover the Forest holds monsters, fairy tales, and pain that they have both been running from for 11 years.
8. Sunrise Nights by Jeff Zentner and Brittany Cavallaro
Jude loves photography, and he’s good at it, too. Between his parents’ divorce and his anxiety, being behind a camera is the only time his mind is quiet.
Florence is confronting the premature end of her dance career as a degenerative eye disease begins to steal her balance. She’s having a hard time letting go.
The two meet at Sunrise Night, their sleepaway art camp’s dusk-to-dawn closing celebration, and decide to take a chance on each other. Their one rule: No contact for a year after the sun has risen. Over the course of three Sunrise Nights, will Florence and Jude find a deeper connection and learn who they are—and who they could be together?
9. Nothing Burns as Bright as You by Ashley Woodfolk
Two girls. One wild and reckless day. Years of tumultuous history unspooling like a thin, fraying string in the hours after they set a fire.
They were best friends. Until they became more. Their affections grew. Until the blurry lines became dangerous.
Over the course of a single day, the depth of their past, the confusion of their present, and the unpredictability of their future is revealed. And the girls will learn that hearts, like flames, aren’t so easily tamed.
It starts with a fire.
How will it end?
10. Chlorine Sky by Mahogany L. Browne
From the first ever poet-in-residence at Lincoln Center comes a bold coming-of-age story told in verse about a young woman who loses a best friend, but finds herself in the process. The joys of basketball, the tumult of high school, and the bonds of family are lyrically woven together in this must-read novel.
With Lay Li I don’t have to think too hard
I’m the friend of the star
& I don’t mind, not at all
It gives me time to think about my dreams & the WNBA
But when I call Lay Li & she don’t pick up
A pit in my stomach grows like a redwood tree
Sky is used to standing in the shadow of her best friend. Lay Li is the sun everyone orbits around. But since high school started, Lay Li has begun attracting the attention of boys, and Sky is left out in the cold. The only place Sky can find her footing is on the basketball court. With each dribble of the ball, Sky begins to find her own rhythm. Lay Li may always be the sun, but that doesn’t mean Sky can’t shine on her own.
With gritty and heartbreaking honesty, a critically acclaimed poet, delivers her first novel in verse about broken promises, fast rumors, and learning to generate your own light.
11. Baby Teeth by Meg Grehan
A unique verse novel of queer love, lust, and vampires. From the award-winning author of The Deepest Breath and The Space Between.
The blood
Feeds the hunger
That threatens everything
It starts when Claudia offers her a yellow rose.
Immy has been in love before – many times, across many lifetimes. But never as deeply, as intensely as this.
Claudia has never been in love this before either. But then, this is her first time with a vampire.
The forbidden thirst for blood runs deep in Immy. And within her mind clamour the voices, of all the others she has been, their desires, and their wrongs.
12. Saints of the Household by Ari Tison
Max and Jay have always depended on one another for their survival. Growing up with a physically abusive father, the two Bribri American brothers have learned that the only way to protect themselves and their mother is to stick to a schedule and keep their heads down.
But when they hear a classmate in trouble in the woods, instinct takes over and they intervene, breaking up a fight and beating their high school’s star soccer player to a pulp. This act of violence threatens the brothers’ dreams for the future and their beliefs about who they are. As the true details of that fateful afternoon unfold over the course of the novel, Max and Jay grapple with the weight of their actions, their shifting relationship as brothers, and the realization that they may be more like their father than they thought. They’ll have to reach back to their Bribri roots to find their way forward.
Told in alternating points of view using vignettes and poems, debut author Ari Tison crafts an emotional, slow-burning drama about brotherhood, abuse, recovery, and doing the right thing.
13. Ain’t Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds, illustrated by Jason Griffin
Jason Reynolds and his best bud, Jason Griffin had a mind-meld. And they decided to tackle it, in one fell swoop, in about ten sentences, and 300 pages of art, this piece, this contemplation-manifesto-fierce-vulnerable-gorgeous-terrifying-WhatIsWrongWithHumans-hope-filled-hopeful-searing-Eye-Poppingly-Illustrated-tender-heartbreaking-how-The-HECK-did-They-Come-UP-with-This project about oxygen. And all of the symbolism attached to that word, especially NOW.
And so for anyone who didn’t really know what it means to not be able to breathe, REALLY breathe, for generations, now you know. And those who already do, you’ll be nodding yep yep, that is exactly how it is.
14. The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin by Kip Wilson
On her eighteenth birthday, Hilde leaves her orphanage in 1930s Berlin, and heads out into the world to discover her place in it. But finding a job is hard, at least until she stumbles into Café Lila, a vibrant cabaret full of expressive customers. Rosa, one of the club’s waitresses and performers, immediately takes Hilde under her wing. As the café denizens slowly embrace Hilde, and she embraces them in turn, she discovers her voice and her own blossoming feelings for Rosa.
But Berlin is in turmoil. Between the elections, protests in the streets, worsening antisemitism and anti-homosexual sentiment, and the beginning seeds of unrest in Café Lila itself, Hilde will have to decide what’s best for her future . . . and what it means to love a place on the cusp of war.
15. I Can’t Even Think Straight by Dean Atta
Kai knows who he is to others: The good grandson, the reliable best friend, the romantic backup. But he doesn’t quite know who he is to himself.
Kai wants to come out at school, but his best friend there, Matt, stays closeted for fear of getting kicked out by his conservative parents—and wants Kai to do the same. Kai unhappily agrees, but when a rumor goes around that Kai and Matt are dating, Matt starts acting differently anyway.
Kai’s other best friend, Vass, is proudly nonbinary and thinks Matt is a negative influence—though maybe that’s just their crush on Kai talking. Kai has always turned to writing to express his emotions, but when his on-page emotions erupt into the real world, he might just be putting the delicate balance of his life at risk.
Told with Dean Atta’s signature lyricism and candor, this deeply feeling story explores the complexities of crushes, navigating identity, and coming out.
16. The Truth Project by Dante Medema
Seventeen-year-old Cordelia Koenig intended to breeze through her senior project. While her peers stressed, Cordelia planned to use the same trace-your-roots genealogy idea her older sister used years prior. And getting partnered with her longtime crush, Kodiak Jones, is icing on the cake. All she needs to do is mail in her DNA sample, write about her ancestry results, and get that easy A.
But when Cordelia’s GeneQuest results reveal that her father is not the person she thought he was, but a stranger who lives thousands of miles away, her entire world shatters. Now she isn’t sure of anything—not the mother who lied, the man she calls Dad, or the girl staring back at her in the mirror.
If your life began with a lie, how can you ever be sure of what’s true?
17. What Goes Up by Christine Heppermann
How do you forgive yourself—and the people you love—when a shocking discovery leads to a huge mistake?
When Jorie wakes up in the loft bed of a college boy she doesn’t recognize, she’s instantly filled with regret. What happened the night before? What led her to this place? Was it her father’s infidelity? Her mother’s seemingly weak acceptance? Her recent breakup with Ian, the boy who loved her art and supported her through the hardest time of her life?
As Jorie tries to reconstruct the events that led her to this point, free verse poems lead the reader through the current morning, as well as flashbacks to her relationships with her parents, her friends, her boyfriend, and the previous night.
18. The Name She Gave Me by Betty Culley
Rynn was born with a hole in her heart—literally. Although it was fixed long ago, she still feels an emptiness there when she wonders about her birth family.
As her relationship with her adoptive mother fractures, Rynn finally decides she needs to know more about the rest of her family. Her search starts with a name, the only thing she has from her birth mother, and she quickly learns that she has a younger sister living in foster care in a nearby town. But if Rynn reconnects with her biological sister, it may drive her adoptive family apart for good.
This powerful story uncovers both beautiful and heartbreaking truths and explores how challenging, yet healing, family can be.
19. Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam
Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, he’s seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. “Boys just being boys” turns out to be true only when those boys are white.
Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal’s bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it?
With spellbinding lyricism, award-winning author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam tell a moving and deeply profound story about how one boy is able to maintain his humanity and fight for the truth, in a system designed to strip him of both.
20. When You Ask Me Where I’m Going by Jasmin Kaur
scream
so that one day
a hundred years from now
another sister will not have to
dry her tears wondering
where in history
she lost her voice
The six sections of the book explore what it means to be a young woman living in a world that doesn’t always hear her and tell the story of Kiran as she flees a history of trauma and raises her daughter, Sahaara, while living undocumented in North America.
Delving into current cultural conversations including sexual assault, mental health, feminism, and immigration, this narrative of resilience, healing, empowerment, and love will galvanize readers to fight for what is right in their world.
21. An Impossible Thing to Say by Arya Shahi
Omid needs the right words to connect with his newly met grandfather and distant Iranian heritage, words to tell a special girl what she means to him and to show everyone that he truly belongs in Tucson, Arizona, the only home he’s ever known. Neither the school play’s Shakespearean English nor his parents’ Farsi seems up to the task, and it’s only when Omid delves into the rhymes and rhythms of rap music that he starts to find his voice. But even as he does so, an act of terrorism transforms familiar accents into new threats.
Then a family member disappears, and it seems everyone but Omid knows why. When words fail altogether and violence takes their place, what will Omid do next?
22. Sold by Patricia McCormick
Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut in the mountains of Nepal. Her family is desperately poor, but her life is full of simple pleasures, like raising her black-and-white speckled goat, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family’s crops, Lakshmi’s stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family.
Lakshmi’s life becomes a nightmare from which she cannot escape. Still, she lives by her mother’s words—“Simply to endure is to triumph.” Then the day comes when she must make a decision. Will she risk everything for a chance to reclaim her life?
23. Solo by Kwame Alexander & Mary Rand Hess
Blade never asked for a life of the rich and famous. In fact, he’d give anything not to be the son of Rutherford Morrison, a washed-up rock star and drug addict with delusions of a comeback. Or to no longer be part of a family known most for lost potential, failure, and tragedy. The one true light is his girlfriend, Chapel, but her parents have forbidden their relationship, assuming—like many—that Blade will become just like his father.
In reality, the only thing Blade has in common with Rutherford is the music that lives inside them. But not even the songs that flow through Blade’s soul are enough when he’s faced with two unimaginable realities: the threat of losing Chapel forever, and the revelation of a long-held family secret, one that leaves him questioning everything he thought was true. All that remains is a letter and a ticket to Ghana—both of which could bring Blade the freedom and love he’s been searching for, or leave him feeling even more adrift.
24. Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
A cannon. A strap.
A piece. A biscuit.
A burner. A heater.
A chopper. A gat.
A hammer. A tool for RULE.
Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he?
25. Everything Is Poison by Joy McCullough
For as long as she can remember, Carmela Tofana has desperately wanted one thing: to be allowed behind the counter of her mother’s apothecary in Campo Marzio, Rome. When she turns sixteen, she’s finally allowed into the inner sanctum: the workroom where her mother, Giulia Tofana, and two assistants craft renowned remedies for their customers.
But for every sweet-smelling flower extract in the workroom, there’s another potion requiring darker ingredients. And then there’s Aqua Tofana, the apothecary’s remedy of last resort for husbands who are just as deadly as any disease.
In all Carmela’s years of wishing to follow in her mother’s footsteps, she never realized one tiny vial could be the death of them all.
26. Light Filters In by Caroline Kaufman
In Light Filters In, Caroline Kaufman—known as @poeticpoison—does what she does best: reflects our own experiences back at us and makes us feel less alone, one exquisite and insightful piece at a time. She writes about giving up too much of yourself to someone else, not fitting in, endlessly Googling “how to be happy,” and ultimately figuring out who you are.
This hardcover collection features completely new material plus some fan favorites from Caroline’s account. Filled with haunting, spare pieces of original art, Light Filters In will thrill existing fans and newcomers alike.
27. Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson
Bestselling author Laurie Halse Anderson is known for the unflinching way she writes about, and advocates for, survivors of sexual assault.
Now, inspired by her fans and enraged by how little in our culture has changed since her groundbreaking novel Speak was first published twenty years ago, she has written a poetry memoir that is as vulnerable as it is rallying, as timely as it is timeless. In free verse, Anderson shares reflections, rants, and calls to action woven between deeply personal stories from her life that she’s never written about before. Searing and soul-searching, this important memoir is a denouncement of our society’s failures and a love letter to all the people with the courage to say #metoo and #timesup, whether aloud, online, or only in their own hearts.
Shout speaks truth to power in a loud, clear voice—and once you hear it, it is impossible to ignore.
28. One Step Forward by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
Raised in a politically divided family, Matilda wondered if she could be as courageous as her older sister who fought for suffrage. Joining the radical protest movement came with plenty of risk. Women were routinely scorned, harassed, arrested—and worse. And taking a stand for her rights could tear her family apart.
Told in powerful verse, One Step Forward follows Matilda’s coming-of-age journey as she takes her first step into action. Amid the backdrop of World War I, Matilda’s story vividly highlights the extreme mental, physical, and emotional battles faced by the protestors leading up to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. It also reveals the bravery, hard work, and spirit of the women who paved the way for future generations to use their voices and votes.
29. Dear Medusa by Olivia A. Cole
I’m starting to realize
that a woman doesn’t get that mad
so mad that her hair turns to snakes
so mad that her rage turns blood to boulder
all on her own.
Sixteen-year-old Alicia Rivers has a reputation that precedes her. But there’s more to her story than the whispers that follow her throughout the hallways at school–whispers that splinter into a million different insults that really mean: a girl who has had sex. But what her classmates don’t know is that Alicia was sexually abused by a popular teacher, and that trauma has rewritten every cell in her body into someone she doesn’t recognize. To the world around her, she’s been cast, like the mythical Medusa, as not the victim but the monster of her own story: the slut who asked for it.
Alicia was abandoned by her best friend, quit the track team, and now spends her days in detention feeling isolated and invisible. When mysterious letters left in her locker hint at another victim, Alicia struggles to keep up the walls she’s built around her trauma. At the same time, her growing attraction to a new girl in school makes her question what those walls are really keeping out.
30. I Am the Swarm by Hayley Chewins
As far back as anyone can remember, the women of the Strand family have been magical.
Their gifts manifest when they each turn fifteen, always in different ways. But Nell Strand knows that her family’s magic is a curse. Her mother’s age changes every day; she’s often too young to be the mother Nell needs. Her older sister bleeds music and will do anything to release the songs inside her. Nell sees the way magic rips her family apart again and again.
When Nell’s own magic arrives in the form of ladybugs alighting on the keys of her beloved piano, the first thing she feels is joy. The ladybugs are a piece of her, a harmless and delicate manifestation of her creativity. But soon enough, the rest come. Thick-shelled glossy beetles that creep along her collarbone when her piano teacher stares at her. Soft gray moths that appear and die alongside a rush of disappointment. Worst of all are the wasps. It doesn’t matter how deep she buries her rage, the wasps always come. Nell will have to decide just how much of herself she’s willing to lock away to stop them—or if she can find the strength to feel, no matter the consequences.
31. Every Body Looking by Candice Iloh
When Ada leaves home for her freshman year at a Historically Black College, it’s the first time she’s ever been so far from her family—and the first time that she’s been able to make her own choices and to seek her place in this new world.
As she stumbles deeper into the world of dance and explores her sexuality, she also begins to wrestle with her past—her mother’s struggle with addiction, her Nigerian father’s attempts to make a home for her.
Ultimately, Ada discovers she needs to brush off the destiny others have chosen for her and claim full ownership of her body and her future.
What novels in verse take your breath away? Let us know in the comments!