This image is the cover for the book Wicked Enchantment

Wicked Enchantment

A voice for justice, anti-racism, and equality—here is the greatest and most powerful work of the people’s poet, Wanda Coleman.

One of the most talked about literary collections of the year is this collection by a beat-up, broke, and Black woman who wrote with anger, humor, and clarity about her life on the margins. Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems is a selection of 130 of Coleman’s poems spanning four decades, edited and introduced by Terrance Hayes. Although Coleman was rejected by the literary elites during her lifetime, here’s what people are saying now about Wicked Enchantment:

“Wanda Coleman is not just wickedly wise, she is transcendent.” —The Washington Post

“These poems are wildly fun and inventive . . . and frequently hilarious; they seem to cover every human experience and emotion.” —The New York Times

“Wanda Coleman’s work has that ineffable quality that accompanies poetry you understand in your belly and your head. . . . It is an unmistakable style that propels a Coleman poem, and draws us into it.” —Reginald Dwayne Betts

“Wicked Enchantment has words to crack you open and heal you where it counts—hateful and hilarious, heartbroke and hellbent.” —Mary Karr, New York Times bestselling author

“One of the greatest poets ever to come out of L.A.” —The New Yorker

“One of the most exciting, original, deliciously dangerous voices of the 20th century.” —The Irish Times

“Required Reading” —Bustle

“Best Poetry of 2020” The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Irish Times

Winner California Independent Booksellers Alliance’s 2020 Golden Poppy Award for Poetry

Wanda Coleman, Terrance Hayes

Wanda Coleman—poet, storyteller and journalist—was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. Coleman was awarded the prestigious 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for Bathwater Wine from the American Academy of Poets, becoming the first African-American woman to ever win the prize, and was a bronze-medal finalist for the 2001 National Book Award for Poetry for Mercurochrome. Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems is the first new collection of her work since her death in 2013.



Terrance Hayes (editor) is the author of Lighthead (National Book Award winner) and, most recently, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Critics' Top Books of 2018)—both from Penguin Books. Hayes was awarded a MacArthur Genius Fellowship in 2014. Hayes served as the 2017-2018 poetry editor for New York Times Magazine, and was guest editor of The Best American Poetry 2014. Mr. Hayes lives in New York City.

Black Sparrow Press