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Tiana Clark is the author of the poetry collections Scorched Earth; I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood, which won the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize; and Equilibrium, which won the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. Clark’s other honors include a Pushcart Prize, a Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. More about this author >
Dive between the borders of ruined and radical love with this lyrical poetry collection that explores topics as expansive as divorce, the first Black Bachelorette, and the art world. Stanzas shift between reverence to irreverence as they take us on a journey through institutional and historical pains alongside sensuality and queer, Black joys.
Scorched Earth is a beautifully brutal account of the end of one life and the opening of another. While Tiana Clark’s prodigious imagination is firmly centered in Black female identity, her poems encompass wide realms of human experience, inviting readers across a spectrum even as they resonate with the historic trauma of Black life. Formally inclined and linguistically sophisticated, Clark’s technique is inflected with an experimental verve and rebellious spirit that reveals itself in a frankness of expression perfectly suited to this moment in time.
Tiana Clark at the 2025 National Book Awards Finalist Reading
