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The Book of Alice: Poems
From award-winning author Diamond Forde comes a stunningly powerful poetry collection exploring lineage and the legacy of survival as seen through the life of her grandmother Alice—a Black woman born in the Jim Crow South—using the King James Bible as a narrative framework.
“Alice / a god-song, swings still in the high / branch of our throats. I miss her, wonder / what she plants in heaven’s mulch.”
When her grandmother Alice died, poet Diamond Forde inherited a well-worn copy of the KJV Bible to remember her by. Borrowing forms, themes, and characters from its pages, Diamond resurrects her memory in a new sacred The Book of Alice. With rich, surprising language and formal dexterity, these poems retell the story of her life.
Born in rural North Carolina, Alice joined the tide of the Great Migration when she made her exodus to New York City. She married, divorced, and raised eight children, all while struggling to define herself in an America that looks frighteningly like our own. Exploring themes of oppression, liberation, and redemption, Forde draws bold parallels between biblical narratives and the lived experiences of Alice and other Black women, so often relegated to the margins of history. These poems feature the voices of Lot’s wife, Sethe from Morrison’s Beloved, and even the sow from Noah’s ark, and embody creative apocryphal forms like recipes, a family tree, and a US Census Report alongside imagined psalms and scriptures.
More than a poetry collection, The Book of Alice is a dialogue with the past, a meditation on the present, and a road map for the future. Essential reading for anyone drawn to the intersections of race, gender, history, and the unyielding power of personal stories, The Book of Alice is a heartfelt elegy and an invitation to find strength in the roots of our shared humanity.
“Alice / a god-song, swings still in the high / branch of our throats. I miss her, wonder / what she plants in heaven’s mulch.”
When her grandmother Alice died, poet Diamond Forde inherited a well-worn copy of the KJV Bible to remember her by. Borrowing forms, themes, and characters from its pages, Diamond resurrects her memory in a new sacred The Book of Alice. With rich, surprising language and formal dexterity, these poems retell the story of her life.
Born in rural North Carolina, Alice joined the tide of the Great Migration when she made her exodus to New York City. She married, divorced, and raised eight children, all while struggling to define herself in an America that looks frighteningly like our own. Exploring themes of oppression, liberation, and redemption, Forde draws bold parallels between biblical narratives and the lived experiences of Alice and other Black women, so often relegated to the margins of history. These poems feature the voices of Lot’s wife, Sethe from Morrison’s Beloved, and even the sow from Noah’s ark, and embody creative apocryphal forms like recipes, a family tree, and a US Census Report alongside imagined psalms and scriptures.
More than a poetry collection, The Book of Alice is a dialogue with the past, a meditation on the present, and a road map for the future. Essential reading for anyone drawn to the intersections of race, gender, history, and the unyielding power of personal stories, The Book of Alice is a heartfelt elegy and an invitation to find strength in the roots of our shared humanity.
96 pages, Paperback
Published January 20, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
February 3, 2026
I love a fully realized poetry collection and The Book of Alice is one such. The project here is so thoughtfully, powerfully executed and I'm so glad to have read this.
July 8, 2025
Perfection. The concept of a family history through the framework of the Bible, the relationship of the people included, the use of various devices. There's a goddamn RECIPE as a poem and it was one of my favorite parts. It encompasses not just the biblical and the familial, but the harsh, often challenging humanization of the genealogical record while celebrating, condemning, and comforting everyone. I am blown away.
Thanks for the ARC, and thanks for Diamond Forde.
Thanks for the ARC, and thanks for Diamond Forde.
Want to Read
February 13, 2026MY FRIEND HAD AN EXTRA COPY OF THIS SO THEY GAVE IT TO ME LET'S FUCKING GOOOOO WE POPPING THE BIGGEST BOTTLES TONIGHT
March 7, 2026
absolutely brilliant. Kind of stunned at how much I loved this. I just read it bc I saw Roxane gay had reviewed it and I love her but I didn’t have any expectations beyond that.
Ford crams decades of life, love, suffering, and hope into this poetry collection. It is at once about her family’s unique experiences and simultaneously universal. That dichotomy is present in the best art imo.
She reconciles with the harms of slavery, structural racism, misogyny, fatphobia, with the deep joy of the love within her family and in her life.
The structure was fascinating. I especially loved the poems from fords modern perspective on her body and how her family’s past has affected her.
My fave poems below in chronological order:
- lot’s wife
- courtin’
- we must break or the post fights herself about her smallness
- to the people in hell who want ice water
- I can’t write about the ocean without it being about slavery
- acts of submission
Some favorite lines:
- from lot’s wife: “Mountaintops crusted with salt. Country/ whose borders are diamonds of salt or the salted coast/ of a continent, its oceans full of the bones of women/ like me, whose tombs are the only homes we keep – / GOD, give me a name worth remembering.”
- from fat gospel: “Alice started, new to how a body could whimsy wide at another man’s/ wish.”
- from we must break or the post fights herself about her smallness: “thank GOD I learned/ that fear is a friend to silence”
(That might be favorite line in the whole collection esp in the context of the whole poem)
Ford crams decades of life, love, suffering, and hope into this poetry collection. It is at once about her family’s unique experiences and simultaneously universal. That dichotomy is present in the best art imo.
She reconciles with the harms of slavery, structural racism, misogyny, fatphobia, with the deep joy of the love within her family and in her life.
The structure was fascinating. I especially loved the poems from fords modern perspective on her body and how her family’s past has affected her.
My fave poems below in chronological order:
- lot’s wife
- courtin’
- we must break or the post fights herself about her smallness
- to the people in hell who want ice water
- I can’t write about the ocean without it being about slavery
- acts of submission
Some favorite lines:
- from lot’s wife: “Mountaintops crusted with salt. Country/ whose borders are diamonds of salt or the salted coast/ of a continent, its oceans full of the bones of women/ like me, whose tombs are the only homes we keep – / GOD, give me a name worth remembering.”
- from fat gospel: “Alice started, new to how a body could whimsy wide at another man’s/ wish.”
- from we must break or the post fights herself about her smallness: “thank GOD I learned/ that fear is a friend to silence”
(That might be favorite line in the whole collection esp in the context of the whole poem)
September 19, 2025
Love to Alice, Forde’s cancerian grandmother.
“GOD, give me a name worth remembering.”
Favorite poem: FAT GOSPEL
“GOD, give me a name worth remembering.”
Favorite poem: FAT GOSPEL
October 13, 2025
Poetry.
This collection floored me.
This collection floored me.
January 21, 2026
“… & in my hands, I think she saw
a potential to dig, to muck deep
into the manure of my imagination, to sprout
offshoots I’ll plant in someone else
someday, when I am not afraid
to think of myself as a god large enough
that every heart-shaped leaf dicing light
to dust could beat in my own chest,
& I’ve never made a life, but I’ve reached
into the refuse they make of us,
found hearts hardy as crocus bulbs,
& in this poem I will plant a world for women
where kudzu climbs & is wanted.”
— from “Poem in Which I Should Write About Cain, but I’m Tired of Writing About Death”
Happy pub day to Diamond Forde’s 🎊 THE BOOK OF ALICE 🎊
— and what joy it is to read another winner of a book from the team at Scribner Poetry! 🥰📚🌟
I love a poetry book that is full of intention and narrative and Forde has done just that and from the beginning I knew I was into it as it started:
“Like anyone with an imagination, I grieve
the infinite me, a multiverse
of self thrust through space dust,
& I’ve survived…”
The first poem then ends with the following:
“the survivor
left to pry these dream songs
from the honeysuckle sky—
promise you’ll hold me
like a long, needful breath
then turn me loose.”
First poem in and we got a need for legacy, a need for living ✨
Before the collection of poetry is divided into chapters like the King James Bible that Forde inherits, she gives us a family tree of a poem which depicts where everyone stands and in which Alice (the Daughter) is “a GOD song swinging in the high / branch of our throats— / what has she planted / in heaven’s mulch?”
“— have I bloomed / the right melody yet?” The Poet asks.
I say yes, like “stardust… shimmering in circles,” I turn each page and there’s cadence in each line such as in “Census of Daughters” where we get:
“their clatter cantoring a timeworn cantata for riches.”
“gaped / the gap in its bruise-black mouth — swore she saw her own mother peek out.”
“Em scopes ghosts strung / up like cobwebs in the corner cuz Em be the GOD bride. Em wear the veil. Em sees…”
“V be body. V be young. V be a tooth warmed in a dusk-gored / plum…”
Just saying— 1st MAJOR poetry book of 2026!! 🤩💯
a potential to dig, to muck deep
into the manure of my imagination, to sprout
offshoots I’ll plant in someone else
someday, when I am not afraid
to think of myself as a god large enough
that every heart-shaped leaf dicing light
to dust could beat in my own chest,
& I’ve never made a life, but I’ve reached
into the refuse they make of us,
found hearts hardy as crocus bulbs,
& in this poem I will plant a world for women
where kudzu climbs & is wanted.”
— from “Poem in Which I Should Write About Cain, but I’m Tired of Writing About Death”
Happy pub day to Diamond Forde’s 🎊 THE BOOK OF ALICE 🎊
— and what joy it is to read another winner of a book from the team at Scribner Poetry! 🥰📚🌟
I love a poetry book that is full of intention and narrative and Forde has done just that and from the beginning I knew I was into it as it started:
“Like anyone with an imagination, I grieve
the infinite me, a multiverse
of self thrust through space dust,
& I’ve survived…”
The first poem then ends with the following:
“the survivor
left to pry these dream songs
from the honeysuckle sky—
promise you’ll hold me
like a long, needful breath
then turn me loose.”
First poem in and we got a need for legacy, a need for living ✨
Before the collection of poetry is divided into chapters like the King James Bible that Forde inherits, she gives us a family tree of a poem which depicts where everyone stands and in which Alice (the Daughter) is “a GOD song swinging in the high / branch of our throats— / what has she planted / in heaven’s mulch?”
“— have I bloomed / the right melody yet?” The Poet asks.
I say yes, like “stardust… shimmering in circles,” I turn each page and there’s cadence in each line such as in “Census of Daughters” where we get:
“their clatter cantoring a timeworn cantata for riches.”
“gaped / the gap in its bruise-black mouth — swore she saw her own mother peek out.”
“Em scopes ghosts strung / up like cobwebs in the corner cuz Em be the GOD bride. Em wear the veil. Em sees…”
“V be body. V be young. V be a tooth warmed in a dusk-gored / plum…”
Just saying— 1st MAJOR poetry book of 2026!! 🤩💯
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
4.5 - “Why not hold to the kick of another’s heart while you can hear it? Why not lose yourself in the unshackled lineage of a song?”
Big thanks to Scribner Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!
I’ve always enjoyed poetry but in recent years I read it more infrequently than I’d like. So I was excited to get this collection which is so poignant and honest that I read it all in one sitting.
In the collection, Forde explores the legacy of her grandmother who was born in the Jim Crow south through the King James Bible she was given after her death. It’s a fascinating journey as the poems blend together to tell a story of oppression and survival while connecting herself to the life her grandmother lived.
It’s really moving and affecting, especially in the way the poems themselves are presented. Each poem is more compelling than the next, blending connections to religion, racism, gender, and history. This isn’t like any other poetry collection I’ve read before, and I’m glad that I was able to read this. It’s truly excellent.
Big thanks to Scribner Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!
I’ve always enjoyed poetry but in recent years I read it more infrequently than I’d like. So I was excited to get this collection which is so poignant and honest that I read it all in one sitting.
In the collection, Forde explores the legacy of her grandmother who was born in the Jim Crow south through the King James Bible she was given after her death. It’s a fascinating journey as the poems blend together to tell a story of oppression and survival while connecting herself to the life her grandmother lived.
It’s really moving and affecting, especially in the way the poems themselves are presented. Each poem is more compelling than the next, blending connections to religion, racism, gender, and history. This isn’t like any other poetry collection I’ve read before, and I’m glad that I was able to read this. It’s truly excellent.
February 6, 2026
Still haven’t processed this book yet. One of the most innovative poetry collections I’ve read. Telling her grandmother’s (and her family’s history) through a retelling of the King James Bible. Black women are storytellers, legends, caregivers, and family historians. To see how Forde canonizes her family’s history in such a creative way truly blew me away. Loved loved loved this one.
From the Notes at the back of the book: “The Book of Alice seeks to recenter the oft-nameless Black women necessary to cre-ation, to ask what happens when we focalize on the Black narratives whitewashed from the most canonized text of all time. The collection follows and affirms the existence of my grandmother Alice, from girlhood to womanhood, during her migration north, and our generational return south, to ask what parts of self-making, of legacy, of inheritance can never be silenced.”
From the Notes at the back of the book: “The Book of Alice seeks to recenter the oft-nameless Black women necessary to cre-ation, to ask what happens when we focalize on the Black narratives whitewashed from the most canonized text of all time. The collection follows and affirms the existence of my grandmother Alice, from girlhood to womanhood, during her migration north, and our generational return south, to ask what parts of self-making, of legacy, of inheritance can never be silenced.”
May 12, 2026
A collection of poems about family, legacy, and storytelling.
from Lot's Wife: "Country / whose borders are diamonds of salt or the salted coast / of a continent, its oceans full of the bones of women / like me, whose tombs are the only homes we keep— / GOD, give me a name worth remembering."
from Poem in Which I Should Write About Cain, but I'm Tired of Writing About Death: "& I've never made a life, but I've reached / into the refuse they make of us, / found hearts hardy as crocus bulbs, / & in this poem I will plant a world for women / where kudzu climbs & is wanted."
from The Poet Returns to the Blue: "I sculpt the brush back, hope to find you in these hills, / walk barefoot as the switchgrass kisses my heels— // I want the mountain to mother me."
from Lot's Wife: "Country / whose borders are diamonds of salt or the salted coast / of a continent, its oceans full of the bones of women / like me, whose tombs are the only homes we keep— / GOD, give me a name worth remembering."
from Poem in Which I Should Write About Cain, but I'm Tired of Writing About Death: "& I've never made a life, but I've reached / into the refuse they make of us, / found hearts hardy as crocus bulbs, / & in this poem I will plant a world for women / where kudzu climbs & is wanted."
from The Poet Returns to the Blue: "I sculpt the brush back, hope to find you in these hills, / walk barefoot as the switchgrass kisses my heels— // I want the mountain to mother me."
January 22, 2026
I have been waiting for this book ever since I read “Clabber Milk Cornbread” by Diamond Forde in 2022. The way stories in the Holy Bible and those of a Black grandma can conjure worlds and help bring me closer to myself is the best kind of spell. I am so grateful this book exists. My grandma would have loved to hear this. Lush and reclaiming and true. This is part of the world(s) I am reaching for with language: the wild resilience of quare-ness inherent in Black Womanist Theology and the matrilineal trails of the Black South. Our Heaven, now.
April 19, 2026
This book blew my mind: the way she dealt with topics of family, race, body and misogyny within a framework that wouldn’t seem to support such humanity.
Her words are also quite gorgeous, bringing common sounding words together in a way that have a musical quality.
My favorite poetry read in 2026 so far!
Her words are also quite gorgeous, bringing common sounding words together in a way that have a musical quality.
My favorite poetry read in 2026 so far!
March 25, 2026
Powerful poems and a quick read!
March 31, 2026
While this wasn’t my favorite collection, I thought the Revelations section was the strongest. I enjoyed the creativity of using recipes as a poetry form.
May 3, 2026
This book is gorgeous and some of the experimentation with form has me thinking. Hard.
March 30, 2026
In a sentence:
A stunning, form‑bending elegy that turns one woman’s life into a living scripture, The Book of Alice floored me with its blend of history, resilience, and deeply felt poetry.
TLDR Review:
For years, poetry was something I loved instinctively. As a teenager and young adult, I devoured it. Then life grew louder and fuller, and somewhere along the way I lost the patience and presence that poetry asks of me. Over the last couple of years, I’ve been slowly rebuilding that muscle. I can’t read a whole collection in one sitting, but I can take in a few poems at a time and let them echo through my day. And I’m finding that I can love poetry again. This year, I’m reading one collection each month, and for February I chose a new release that I suspect will find its way onto prize lists soon.
The Book of Alice is a thoughtfully conceived and powerfully executed project. Diamond Forde turns to her grandmother’s life as both subject and structure, shaping the collection through the language and cadence of the poetry her grandmother knew: the King James Bible. What emerges is a kind of family scripture, a reimagined sacred text that traces a Black woman’s journey from the Jim Crow South to New York City, through marriage and motherhood, through hardship and self-definition.
The poems move between forms—recipes, census records, psalms, genealogies—and together they create a vivid, layered portrait of a woman whose story mirrors so many others left out of official histories. It’s a fascinating and deeply moving journey, one that blends themes of racism, religion, gender, and survival without ever feeling heavy-handed. Instead, the collection feels alive, intimate, and fiercely attentive to the ways personal and collective histories intertwine.
This book floored me. It’s unlike anything I’ve read, and it reminded me why poetry matters: how it can hold grief and resilience in the same breath, how it can honor a life while expanding our understanding of the world around it. I highly recommend it to longtime poetry lovers and to anyone hoping to reconnect with the genre. It’s a remarkable achievement.
A stunning, form‑bending elegy that turns one woman’s life into a living scripture, The Book of Alice floored me with its blend of history, resilience, and deeply felt poetry.
TLDR Review:
For years, poetry was something I loved instinctively. As a teenager and young adult, I devoured it. Then life grew louder and fuller, and somewhere along the way I lost the patience and presence that poetry asks of me. Over the last couple of years, I’ve been slowly rebuilding that muscle. I can’t read a whole collection in one sitting, but I can take in a few poems at a time and let them echo through my day. And I’m finding that I can love poetry again. This year, I’m reading one collection each month, and for February I chose a new release that I suspect will find its way onto prize lists soon.
The Book of Alice is a thoughtfully conceived and powerfully executed project. Diamond Forde turns to her grandmother’s life as both subject and structure, shaping the collection through the language and cadence of the poetry her grandmother knew: the King James Bible. What emerges is a kind of family scripture, a reimagined sacred text that traces a Black woman’s journey from the Jim Crow South to New York City, through marriage and motherhood, through hardship and self-definition.
The poems move between forms—recipes, census records, psalms, genealogies—and together they create a vivid, layered portrait of a woman whose story mirrors so many others left out of official histories. It’s a fascinating and deeply moving journey, one that blends themes of racism, religion, gender, and survival without ever feeling heavy-handed. Instead, the collection feels alive, intimate, and fiercely attentive to the ways personal and collective histories intertwine.
This book floored me. It’s unlike anything I’ve read, and it reminded me why poetry matters: how it can hold grief and resilience in the same breath, how it can honor a life while expanding our understanding of the world around it. I highly recommend it to longtime poetry lovers and to anyone hoping to reconnect with the genre. It’s a remarkable achievement.
October 29, 2025
"The Book of Alice" by Diamond Forde is a collection of poems describing the shock of leaving home and heritage behind; the pain and paths of first love; and questioning the world as people clamber over the roadblocks of life. These poems recall the horrors and atrocities of slavery and its legacy in present-day lives. It is a history that needs to be remembered, and its victims and their descendants honored.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews