YEET!

by jason b crawford

Afrofuturist poetry that envisions Black people finding new worlds of freedom.
  
Following the traditions of Eve L. Ewing, Rio Cortez, and Douglas Kearney, jason b. crawford’s YEET! envisions the Black community lifted off the earth and set free towards the stars. These poems ask what a free Black people would look like and how we might achieve such a thing. This collection presents a new take on Afrofuturism and utopianism. Rather than looking to a future of technological change, it steps years ahead to show how people are happier once they are no longer owned. These poems speak to racism, gun violence, colonization, global warming, flight, joy, friendship, and noise. This is a book about creating new worlds without the systems of supremacy that held down the old one.
 
YEET! is the winner of the 2023 Omnidawn 1st/2nd Poetry Book Contest, chosen by Sawako Nakasayu.
 

104 pages, Paperback

Published October 25, 2025

About the author

jason b. Crawford (They/Them) is a writer born in Washington DC, raised in Lansing, MI. Their debut chapbook collection Summertime Fine is out through Variant Lit. Their second chapbook Twerkable Moments is out from Paper Nautilus Press. Their third chapbook, Good Boi, is forthcoming from Neon Hemlock press in fall 2021. Their debut Full-Length Year of the Unicorn Kidz will be out in 2022 from Sundress Publications. crawford holds a Bachelor of Science in Creative Writing from Eastern Michigan University and is the co-founder of The Knight’s Library Magazine. crawford is the winner of the Courtney Valentine Prize for Outstanding Work by a Millennial Artist, Vella Chapbook Contest, and Variant Lit Chapbook Contest. They are the 2021 OutWrite chapbook contest winner in poetry. Their work can be found in Split Lip Magazine, Glass Poetry, Four Way Review, Voicemail Poems, FreezeRay Poetry, HAD, among others. They are a current poetry MFA candidate at The New School.

Reviews

[Jihyun Yun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crushing and beautiful and igniting all at once. I cried several times. jason b crawford did it again. If you love poetry (and even if you do not)- a must read.

[DeeSoul · Rating 5 out of 5]

1. How did the great migration begin?
we cannot talk about history without mentioning its war-
drawn blades.
- pg. 64, "History of Leaving: a pop quiz"

Yeet! imagines Black people somewhere alive and safe, imagining a new language for the way we breathe. The poems of this collection are formally daring and expansive, asking us to consider the architecture of our experience, the systems and powers that mediate our existence. In this collection, we are dancing, and the flowers bloom with our living. The only thing we must worry about is what to do with all of this beauty.