A5, 206 pages, Black & white printing, Perfect bound, Softcover, 2022

Short Leash Kept On is a new long poem, written in late 2022, with illustrations by the author. The book, Candace Hill writes, concerns “my passion for crime, my own type of detecting, detectives and whatever pops into my head, laced with a deep dive” into the poetry of Lloyd Addison, Russell Atkins, and the work of artist Tom Feelings. This is dizzying and dazzling work, flying in on torrents of invention like a Cecil Taylor solo or the careening cadences and limber lineages of the known and unknown poets of the Black Radical Tradition—from Atkins, Addison, and Julia Fields through to giovanni singleton and Julie Ezelle Patton; swimming in the currents of language, flying on the currents of its air, rising and falling and swooping and careening in syncopated arioso twists. “America was a place”, writes Hill. This work should be emblazoned all over whatever comes next.

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