Johnson, Taylor: Inheritance

Taylor Johnson’s debut poetry collection, Inheritance, explores the complexities and limitations of language, physicality and capitalism. Resisting singularities, each poem emerges with a distinct sound, space and sensibility. Be it driving in a Lincoln Town Car or moving through pine forests and becoming immersed in the sounds of animals and nature; languishing in a lovers’ invitation, transcending from the syncopation of Go-go or walking the pavements of Washington D.C.—‘dissolving into sound’.

Johnson’s critical perspective is rooted in connection. These poems gesture towards the tools we might need for living alongside rather than against or in spite of an inundation of daily oppressions. Be it redefining trans Blackness, environmental degradation, or land ownership and labour. With receptiveness and tenderness Johnson strolls around language, listening to silence—inheriting it, filling it and remaking it.

Taylor Johnson is from Washington, DC. He is the author of Inheritance (Alice James Books, 2020, US; Anamot Press, 2023, UK), winner of the 2021 Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. His work appears in Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, The Baffler, Scalawag, and elsewhere. Johnson is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and a recipient of the 2017 Larry Neal Writers’ Award from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and the 2021 Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging Writers from Lambda Literary. He was the inaugural 2022 Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum. He is the Poet Laureate of Takoma Park, Maryland.

Themes
Queer poetry, trans Blackness, racial
justice poetry, nature, capitalism,
inheritance, intimacy, jazz

For readers of Natalie Diaz, Jay Bernard,
Fred Moten, Mary Jean Chan, Jericho
Brown, Danez Smith, June Jordan

Cover design by Yannick Scott

Printed and bound by TJ Books in Padstow, Cornwall, UK