jason b. crawford launches YEET!
with DeeSoul Carson and Jayson P. Smith
Afrofuturist poetry that envisions Black people finding new worlds of freedom.
Following the traditions of Eve L. Ewing, Rio Cortez, and Douglas Kearney, jason b. crawford’s YEET! envisions the Black community lifted off the earth and set free towards the stars. These poems ask what a free Black people would look like and how we might achieve such a thing. This collection presents a new take on Afrofuturism and utopianism. Rather than looking to a future of technological change, it steps years ahead to show how people are happier once they are no longer owned. These poems speak to racism, gun violence, colonization, global warming, flight, joy, friendship, and noise. This is a book about creating new worlds without the systems of supremacy that held down the old one.
YEET! is the winner of the 2023 Omnidawn 1st/2nd Poetry Book Contest, chosen by Sawako Nakasayu.
About the poets
jason b. crawford (He/They) born in Washington DC and raised in Lansing, MI, is the author of Year of the Unicorn Kidz. Their second collection, YEET! is the winner of the Omnidawn 1st/2nd Book Prize and will be published Fall 2025. They have been published in Poetry Magazine, Academy of American Poets, Cincinnati Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, RHINO Poetry, among others. They are a 2023 Emerging Writers Fellow for Lambda Literary and hold their MFA in Poetry from The New School.
DeeSoul Carson is a poet & educator and hosts the O, Word? podcast. A Stanford alum, his work is featured in Muzzle Magazine, AGNI, The Offing, & elsewhere. For his work, DeeSoul has received a National Endowment for the Arts and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, as well as fellowships from the NYU MFA program, the Watering Hole, and the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference. His debut full-length, The Laughing Barrel, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in Spring 2027. Find more of his work at deesoulpoetry.com
Jayson P. Smith is a poet, performance artist, curator & educator from the Bronx. Most recently a 2024 Hawthornden Brooklyn Writer in Residence, J's poetry has received support from NYFA, The Poetry Project, and Callaloo, among others. Recent poems have been published in the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day, field meridians, & html.review. Their performance work has been featured at JACK, Center for Performance Research, and The Guggenheim. Jayson founded NOMAD Readings in 2016, which they continue to host and curate. Jayson is currently a dancer with J. Bouey Dance Projects & Asę Dance Theater. Find them at www.jaysonpsmith.com.