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Coal
  • Published: 16 April 2026
  • ISBN: 9781837310784
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 128
Categories:

Coal

Formats & editions
Paperback
15 July 2025
EBook
16 Apr 2026
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A beloved and ground-breaking collection by the legendary poet, writer and political activist

‘I am Black because I come from the earth’s inside
now take my word for jewel in the open light.’

Impassioned and profound, the poems in Coal showcase Audre Lorde in all her dazzling elegance and multiplicity. Mournful, celebratory, politically conscious, this early collection faithfully captures the complex interiority of the self. With insight and great feeling, these poems explore racial and sexual politics, liberation and love; they are strongly autobiographical (including poems about Lorde’s children, her sister and her parents, as well as an elegy for a dear childhood friend). These timeless poems resonate down the years.
  • Published: 16 April 2026
  • ISBN: 9781837310784
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 128
Categories:

Also by Audre Lorde

The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House
The Cancer Journals
Zami
When I Dare to Be Powerful
The Black Unicorn
Sister Outsider
See all

Praise for Coal

For the complexity of her vision, for her moral courage and the catalytic passion of her language, Lorde has already become, for many, an indispensable poet

Adrienne Rich

For us these words indeed are jewels in the open light

Hayden Carruth

In poetry that is as compelling for its ethical vision as for its language, Lorde dares to imagine a changed world

San Francisco Chronicle