Blair is proud to announce the Polaris Poetry Series, featuring collections of Afrofuturistic and Afrofuturism-adjacent poetry, in the vein of recent Blair collections such as The Future of Black (edited by Len Lawson, Cynthia Manick, and Gary Jackson) and The Opposite of Cruelty (by Steven Leyva). This new series is designed to provide a dedicated home for this innovative poetic style and to amplify the voices of strong Black poets. The series will be edited by Cynthia Manick, and collections will be chosen from among those submitted during the July open reading period.
Submissions should be a minimum of 65 pages of poems, with each new poem beginning on a new page. A list of acknowledgements for previously published poems can be included and does not count toward the page total. Submissions are open from July 1-31, 2025, or until we reach our cap of 100 submissions. Submissions are free; donations are welcome. Selected manuscripts will receive a publishing contract and a $1,000 advance against royalties.
From the editor:
When I coedited The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero poetry, I knew that the stories and myths shaped into poems did not end with that collection. To look at the world and ask the how’s and why’s about the universe is science; but to take it a step further and imagine what if is poetry. The Black poetic is multi-hyphenate and uses storytelling to pass down knowledge from generation to generation. This information used to be proof that we survived but has since evolved. It now shows the ways a community celebrates joy, moments of self-reflection, how family connects or disconnects with one another, and more importantly the radical imagination of an inclusive Black future. These dreams of the future can take place 10 years from now or even 100. Following the spirit of Sun Ra and Octavia Butler, and the poetic lineage of Nikki Giovanni, Afrofuturism can manifest in various ways and without limits. The word Polaris, also known as the North Star, is the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Minor. Harriet Tubman used the North Star as a guide and it’s the star that still watches over us. In the new Polaris Poetry Series, we want to see how Black futurity manifests in your poetic world.
Cynthia Manick is the author of No Sweet Without Brine (Amistad-HarperCollins, 2023), which received 5 stars from Roxane Gay, was named among the “Best Poetry of the Last Year” by Ms. magazine, and was selected as a New York Public Library Best Book of 2023. She is the author of Brown Girl Polaris (a Belladonna chaplet); editor of The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry; and winner of the Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry for her first collection Blue Hallelujahs. Manick has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, MacDowell, Yaddo, and Château de la Napoule among other foundations. For 10 years she curated Soul Sister Revue, a quarterly reading series that featured emerging poets, poet laureates, and Pulitzer Prize winners. Her poem “Things I Carry into the World” was made into a film by Motionpoems, and her work has recently featured in VOICES, an audio play and sisterscape by Aja Monet and Eve Ensler’s V-Day. Manick is a storyteller and performer at literary festivals, libraries, and museums, and her work can be found in the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, Brooklyn Rail, The Rumpus, and other outlets. She lives in New York but travels widely for poetry.