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Dead Girl Cameo: A Love Song in Poems
A dazzling docupoetic debut collection interweaving personal loss with the life stories of Aaliyah Haughton, Whitney Houston, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, Phyllis Hyman, Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, and others to explore sexuality, survival, queer mourning, and the afterlives of stardom
“Studded with perfect little jewels of looking, of feeling, of deep knowing . . . These poems haunt, and celebrate, and mourn.”—Safia Elhillo, author of Girls That Never Die
In m. mick powell’s polyphonic, haunting debut, a chorus of voices conjures up intimate pop herstories to map how the poet’s queer Black girlhood was molded by their memory. With tender reverence, powell meditates on the deaths of her own beloveds while reflecting on the many stages of an icon’s life: How did these women challenge conventional representations of Black femininity and transform the musical landscape? How did they navigate abuse and alienation in the limelight? How do the mythologies that survive them establish afterlives of queer femme possibility?
Through sensual imagery, speculative verse, and splendid wordplay, Dead Girl Cameo takes us beyond the headlines, innovating a Black feminist poetic that traverses the richly textured realms of grief, girlhood, love, widowing, femme friendship, and queer fandom.
“Studded with perfect little jewels of looking, of feeling, of deep knowing . . . These poems haunt, and celebrate, and mourn.”—Safia Elhillo, author of Girls That Never Die
In m. mick powell’s polyphonic, haunting debut, a chorus of voices conjures up intimate pop herstories to map how the poet’s queer Black girlhood was molded by their memory. With tender reverence, powell meditates on the deaths of her own beloveds while reflecting on the many stages of an icon’s life: How did these women challenge conventional representations of Black femininity and transform the musical landscape? How did they navigate abuse and alienation in the limelight? How do the mythologies that survive them establish afterlives of queer femme possibility?
Through sensual imagery, speculative verse, and splendid wordplay, Dead Girl Cameo takes us beyond the headlines, innovating a Black feminist poetic that traverses the richly textured realms of grief, girlhood, love, widowing, femme friendship, and queer fandom.
144 pages, Paperback
Published August 5, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
June 24, 2025
”why fuss over the curse of queer girls destined to obsess the dead?”
Don’t mind me, I’m just over here crying about Aaliyah at 7am on a Tuesday.
dead girl cameo is a sensuous and heart achingly beautiful tribute to fandom, interrupted girlhood, sapphic love, and the cruelty of fame. Poems that serve as a requiem for lives cut short in the most cruel and tragic of circumstances, interspersed with tributes to queer joy in teenage bedrooms, in locked hotel rooms, in memories of has been and never will be. Part diary, part eulogy and above all full of reverence and defiance, this is a haunting collection that I look forward to purchasing a copy of for my shelves upon release.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me an e-arc in exchange for an honest review. Please seek this out if you can!
Don’t mind me, I’m just over here crying about Aaliyah at 7am on a Tuesday.
dead girl cameo is a sensuous and heart achingly beautiful tribute to fandom, interrupted girlhood, sapphic love, and the cruelty of fame. Poems that serve as a requiem for lives cut short in the most cruel and tragic of circumstances, interspersed with tributes to queer joy in teenage bedrooms, in locked hotel rooms, in memories of has been and never will be. Part diary, part eulogy and above all full of reverence and defiance, this is a haunting collection that I look forward to purchasing a copy of for my shelves upon release.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me an e-arc in exchange for an honest review. Please seek this out if you can!
December 31, 2025
I didn’t understand most of the book, but I know enough to know that it’s good. I read it as an e-book though which made it bad 😭
The author has a really beautiful talent on her hands, and I didn’t realize she was Cabo Verdean until I finished the book, which is a funny coincidence because I was in Cabo Verde when I read this!
This was truly a love song book but just not for me.
The author has a really beautiful talent on her hands, and I didn’t realize she was Cabo Verdean until I finished the book, which is a funny coincidence because I was in Cabo Verde when I read this!
This was truly a love song book but just not for me.
July 10, 2025
Powerful poetry collection dedicated to the early passing of iconic, talented women of color. Evocative and heartbreaking.
July 16, 2025
5 stars
The title is giving emotional roller coaster, and this is an accurate depiction of the contents. That's a plus, in this case, because a book of poems about women lost all too soon could be a grief spiral, and while that's part of the journey, there is also a running theme of celebration and reverence threaded throughout.
I enjoyed the poems independently, especially as an incoming fan of so many of these artists. I also enjoyed getting to learn more about those who were less familiar to me. While the poems are gripping and stylized in conjunction with each subject's specs, there are also some fascinating added inclusions (news clippings, for example) that force readers out of the romanticized icon worship and back into the harsh reality of their various demises.
I always appreciate a widget but never more so than when it's for a book I love that I know I'd never have encountered without the personal invitation. This is a great example of that circumstance, so I'm extra grateful for the access to this one and look forward to recommending it to my students.
*Special thanks to NetGalley and One World for this widget, which I received in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
The title is giving emotional roller coaster, and this is an accurate depiction of the contents. That's a plus, in this case, because a book of poems about women lost all too soon could be a grief spiral, and while that's part of the journey, there is also a running theme of celebration and reverence threaded throughout.
I enjoyed the poems independently, especially as an incoming fan of so many of these artists. I also enjoyed getting to learn more about those who were less familiar to me. While the poems are gripping and stylized in conjunction with each subject's specs, there are also some fascinating added inclusions (news clippings, for example) that force readers out of the romanticized icon worship and back into the harsh reality of their various demises.
I always appreciate a widget but never more so than when it's for a book I love that I know I'd never have encountered without the personal invitation. This is a great example of that circumstance, so I'm extra grateful for the access to this one and look forward to recommending it to my students.
*Special thanks to NetGalley and One World for this widget, which I received in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
October 25, 2025
wow. this is one of those books that makes you remember the magic that language can create.
August 6, 2025
A FORMATTING NOTE: The ebook is VERY difficult to read on an e reader in some places. There are some font choices that I'm sure print beautifully, but they are so small and faint on the e ink screen that it was almost illegible. I would recommend the print version if you are able.
Dead Girl Cameo: A Love Song in Poems is a poetry collection very different from those I've read before. It's described as "docupoetry," which is poetry that's crafted with existing material blended with the author's own words. Think found footage for poetry. The concept is familiar to me, but I hadn't heard the term before. The more you know!
Powell's collection is a love letter to black musicians* with rich legacies that have lasted far beyond their tragically short lives. Excerpts from interviews with Aaliyah, Whitney, Left Eye, Tammi Terrell, Minnie Ripperton, and others blend with lush sentiments and reflections from the author to create a textual collage of sorts. The result is clearly very personal to Powell, but it manages to feel quite personal to the reader with the shared parasocial ownership of these powerful women.
I, too, cried when Aalyiah died. I cried when Whitney died. I didn't know them, but I knew them. Maybe it just always felt like they knew me. After Dead Girl Cameo, it feels like Powell knows me too.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.
*black musicians and Selena
Also! There is a very wonderful index that lists short biographies of the women mentioned in the collection along with other inspiring source material. I'm very thankful for the shared writers and publications!
Dead Girl Cameo: A Love Song in Poems is a poetry collection very different from those I've read before. It's described as "docupoetry," which is poetry that's crafted with existing material blended with the author's own words. Think found footage for poetry. The concept is familiar to me, but I hadn't heard the term before. The more you know!
Powell's collection is a love letter to black musicians* with rich legacies that have lasted far beyond their tragically short lives. Excerpts from interviews with Aaliyah, Whitney, Left Eye, Tammi Terrell, Minnie Ripperton, and others blend with lush sentiments and reflections from the author to create a textual collage of sorts. The result is clearly very personal to Powell, but it manages to feel quite personal to the reader with the shared parasocial ownership of these powerful women.
I, too, cried when Aalyiah died. I cried when Whitney died. I didn't know them, but I knew them. Maybe it just always felt like they knew me. After Dead Girl Cameo, it feels like Powell knows me too.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.
*black musicians and Selena
Also! There is a very wonderful index that lists short biographies of the women mentioned in the collection along with other inspiring source material. I'm very thankful for the shared writers and publications!
January 19, 2026
black and beloved. absolutely YES. such a beautiful and powerful collection. i got to see the author speak about this book at a festival not too long ago and the pure reverence, dedication and love spoken of on that panel resonates so hard in this book. read it!!
Favorites (and it was hard to choose): dead girls smell like cinnamon, girl:annotation, when Aaliyah met Kidada, resignation, and in that other fantasy where we live forever.
Favorites (and it was hard to choose): dead girls smell like cinnamon, girl:annotation, when Aaliyah met Kidada, resignation, and in that other fantasy where we live forever.
June 19, 2025
I did like this book but the format was a bit all over the place for me even for a free verse poetry book. I honestly did like the poems themselves but wish the book was put together a bit better. Thanks NetGalley and Random House for this ARC read.
3/5
3/5
January 19, 2026
I am so in awe of Powell’s ability to intermingle their personal experiences with queer desire and loss with those of some of the most famous Black femme singers of the past century. It is done almost intuitively, entering the voices of these stars, their lovers, mothers, and friends.
In each voice across this collection, grief is deeply tangled in past, present, and future lust, intimacy, care and adoration.
Powell brings our communal grief of celebrities back to a personal level reminding us how singers shape girlhood and sometimes give us names for our wants and our losses.
“Billie Holiday, from the smoking room”:
“Of course, I was supposed to be other things, too:
sarsaparilla, a solo flute, fae with gossamer wings,
an orchestra of machinery, something other than some
nation's redemptive flame, a country's lost chance
at growing a Black girl loved good. Despite this,
I wore my name like a long pink mink.” (12)
Tammi Terrell, from the backlit bardo”:
“that there is no shade of red in our language
to adequately describe my mothers rage” (14-15)
“Girl study #3”
“Ven aqui, Yessika whispered, the v bent into a soft b. I came, of course, a circuitous convulsion. Little death, little death. First burst of purple, the color of Selena's pantsuit, bruised burgundy and petal-pressed to my lids.”
“self-portrait as Akasha watching her lover shave their own face”:
“that we are mortal must only mean
we know how to make, of each other, prey. I pray
some nights to be the blade; I pray some nights to be its hold—
the thing you touch or the thing that touches you;
tongue tasting razor's red drip, or the blood itself spooling
along my teeth. carnal, this queer ache,
blueing between the midnight fists of my want.” (98)
“Dominique”:
“Together we learned how to scarce our desire; how to skin a once-living thing and preserve its shape.” (99)
In each voice across this collection, grief is deeply tangled in past, present, and future lust, intimacy, care and adoration.
Powell brings our communal grief of celebrities back to a personal level reminding us how singers shape girlhood and sometimes give us names for our wants and our losses.
“Billie Holiday, from the smoking room”:
“Of course, I was supposed to be other things, too:
sarsaparilla, a solo flute, fae with gossamer wings,
an orchestra of machinery, something other than some
nation's redemptive flame, a country's lost chance
at growing a Black girl loved good. Despite this,
I wore my name like a long pink mink.” (12)
Tammi Terrell, from the backlit bardo”:
“that there is no shade of red in our language
to adequately describe my mothers rage” (14-15)
“Girl study #3”
“Ven aqui, Yessika whispered, the v bent into a soft b. I came, of course, a circuitous convulsion. Little death, little death. First burst of purple, the color of Selena's pantsuit, bruised burgundy and petal-pressed to my lids.”
“self-portrait as Akasha watching her lover shave their own face”:
“that we are mortal must only mean
we know how to make, of each other, prey. I pray
some nights to be the blade; I pray some nights to be its hold—
the thing you touch or the thing that touches you;
tongue tasting razor's red drip, or the blood itself spooling
along my teeth. carnal, this queer ache,
blueing between the midnight fists of my want.” (98)
“Dominique”:
“Together we learned how to scarce our desire; how to skin a once-living thing and preserve its shape.” (99)
December 27, 2025
absolutely luscious imagery. so many moments where the words felt so delicious to hold in my mouth, you know? a delight in the language. was thinking a lot about fandom/rpf/celebrity gossip and the sort of ~acceptable subjects outside of the fandom space for discussion in that realm (like the rumored sexualities of girls and women discussed in this book) though the reality is thinking about whitney houston's queerness may not be so acceptable to many & i am just someone who is very entrenched in these sort of spaces, but was really enchanted/delighted at the type of poetry mick spins from those trenches. when we get to the "aaliyah's monologue from my fanfiction where aaliyah and selena fall in love" i was like ooo ok we are cut from the same cloth. which i love! i love when art comes from that obsessive thrust and impulse and shaping of the self through the company it fosters. that poem was also just so achingly gorgeous ("there is nothing else to do but cater to desire as one would cater // to any other small and starving animal" YEEESHHHHH). mick writes eroticism-desire sooooo well, in a way that is energizing to my own prudish desire-filled poetics. really looking forward to returning to the akasha poems after i finish tvl(and eventually read/watch qotd) which i just so happen to be reading at the same time as this lol. book i will return to over and over again!
June 13, 2025
Dead Girl Cameo was a unique, little book of poems that I thoroughly enjoyed. I'm not much of a poetry reader, but the topic called to me when I saw some of my favorite female, Black vocal artists were featured. It's short, not always easy to follow, but if you're into the subject matter, I think it will resonate. If you're not, this is not the book for you.
Dead Girl Cameo uses clippings from the headlines about the famous womens' deaths, interviews, and m. mick powell's own prose to tell the 'dead girl's' perspective. I found it interesting and fun, and totally sad. All of these women died young, in a blaze of glory and notoriety, and were victims of a world that gobbled them up.
If you are into the best of Black women in R&B, Whitney Houston, Billie Holiday, Aaliyah, and more, pick up this book. It will only take you an hour or so to read and it will definitely give some food for thought.
Recommended. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Dead Girl Cameo uses clippings from the headlines about the famous womens' deaths, interviews, and m. mick powell's own prose to tell the 'dead girl's' perspective. I found it interesting and fun, and totally sad. All of these women died young, in a blaze of glory and notoriety, and were victims of a world that gobbled them up.
If you are into the best of Black women in R&B, Whitney Houston, Billie Holiday, Aaliyah, and more, pick up this book. It will only take you an hour or so to read and it will definitely give some food for thought.
Recommended. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
October 23, 2025
I thought I would be able to breeze through this poetry collection. I could not. I was filled with so many emotions that I wasn’t anticipating.
The collection is in “loving and everlasting memory” of women who died at a very young age. Many of the deaths impacted me as I matured into womanhood i.e. Selena Quintanilla-Perez, Aaliyah Houghton, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, Whitney Elizabeth Houston and Bobbi Kristina Houston Brown. Reading poems about these women felt like reliving the news and sadness of their deaths all over again. That is the power of this power collection, it unlocks emotions especially grief.
The poems are in many creative formats. I read the collection on an e-reader. Some of the poem formats did not work well with using an electronic device. It may be better to read the collection in a print copy.
I was sent an electronic advanced readers copy by the publisher, One World via Netgalley.
The collection is in “loving and everlasting memory” of women who died at a very young age. Many of the deaths impacted me as I matured into womanhood i.e. Selena Quintanilla-Perez, Aaliyah Houghton, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, Whitney Elizabeth Houston and Bobbi Kristina Houston Brown. Reading poems about these women felt like reliving the news and sadness of their deaths all over again. That is the power of this power collection, it unlocks emotions especially grief.
The poems are in many creative formats. I read the collection on an e-reader. Some of the poem formats did not work well with using an electronic device. It may be better to read the collection in a print copy.
I was sent an electronic advanced readers copy by the publisher, One World via Netgalley.
August 25, 2025
In this poetry collection, Powell revisits her own past and the lives of black female music icons who tragically died young. She includes a mix of media clips that announce the artist’s death followed by poetry that touches on the artist’s talent and challenges she faced. Powell’s poetic style is impactful and moving. To echo other reviewers, however, formatting choices made for a challenging read. Fonts and layout changed so regularly it lent a choppy feel to the read that otherwise has a nice flow.
Thank you to Random House | One World and NetGalley for providing this eARC.
#DeadGirlCameo #NetGalley
November 21, 2025
I had high hopes for this book after reading the various reviews and comments found on Good Reads about the book. I became somewhat dismayed and moderately disappointed by what i gathered ti be a their lack of developmental mature insights that were pervasive in the authors True assessments of the full encompassing reason for their answers and acceptance for the answers without the perfunctory follow up inquiries necessary to cement their definitive answers for analysis
NO ist time duc should:
Pp should never accept iiblly acceptanced, You should hold No firm standards. a Make a free reservation at ese @activation at no cost.
NO ist time duc should:
Pp should never accept iiblly acceptanced, You should hold No firm standards. a Make a free reservation at ese @activation at no cost.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 22, 2025
I couldn’t put down
Dead Girl Cameo A Love Song in Poems
, written by M. Mick Powell. This collection of poetry brought me to tears more than once. The collection’s focus is on the loss of some very talented women from pop culture. Some of these women include: Aaliyah Haughton, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, Selena, and Whitney Houston to name a few. All of these women were taken too young and truly left a mark on the memory of not only pop culture, but of their fans. I would highly recommend this collection of poems.
A huge thank you to NetGalley, Random House and One World for the advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
A huge thank you to NetGalley, Random House and One World for the advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
July 21, 2025
An inventive, poignant, moving poetry collection about beloved Black women we lost too soon, from Minnie Riperton to Whitney Houston to Aaliyah. Weaving in headlines, lyrics, and interview quotes, m. mick powell explores love, loss, grief, queerness, and possibility in a way you'll never forget.
August 5, 2025
best book of poems released this year by far
September 28, 2025
An absolutely stunning piece of work.
December 17, 2025
Well written, just not my thing
January 2, 2026
"The moment was not like a warm honey, Love-
it was a torrid thing, a gentle beast with teeth."
heartbreaking. genuinely heartbreaking
it was a torrid thing, a gentle beast with teeth."
heartbreaking. genuinely heartbreaking
Read
January 1, 2026I really appreciated this one, and many of the lines really struck me. It wasn’t a “me” book, but felt like a new friend.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews