To Be Named Something Else (Miller Williams Poetry Prize

Offers a high-spirited celebration of Black matriarchy and lineage - both familial and literary – centering on the coming-of-age of Black femmes in Harlem. Winner of the 2023 Miller Williams Poetry Prize.
To Be Named Something Else, winner of the 2023 Miller Williams Poetry Prize, is a high-spirited celebration of Black matriarchy and lineage—both familial and literary. Centering the coming-of-age of Black femmes in Harlem, Shaina Phenix’s debut collection, in the words of series judge Patricia Smith: “enlivens the everyday—the everyday miraculous, the everyday hallelujah, the numbing everyday love, the everyday risk of just being Black and living. There is absolutely nowhere these poems aren’t—we’re dancing and sweating through our clothes, terminating a pregnancy in a chilled room of white and silver, finally gettin’ those brows threaded and nails did, practicing gettin’ the Holy Ghost, sending folks to their rest, having babies, listening carefully to the lessons of elders, and sometimes even talking back. . . To Be Named Something Else is a book of reason and reckoning, substance and shadow. It’s tender and wide-aloud and just about everything we need right now, when both reason and reckoning are in such woefully short supply.” Phenix’s full-throated poetry, with its “superlative combination of formalism and funk,” is assuredly something else.

UK Delivery:

• Free delivery on all orders of £10 or more.
• £1.49 delivery fee on orders below £10.
• UK orders are shipped via Royal Mail 2nd Class.

International Delivery:

• Flat rate delivery charges vary by country.

Dispatch and Delivery Times:

• All orders are shipped from our warehouse in Northampton, UK within 48 hours of receipt during working hours.
• UK mainland orders typically arrive within 3-5 working days via Royal Mail 2nd Class.
• International estimated delivery times:
• Europe & Channel Islands: 7 to 10 working days
• USA: 7 to 15 working days
• Rest of the World: 9 to 21 working days

View our full delivery infomation here.