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Otherwhere: New and Selected Poems, 1976-2026
Not yet published
Expected 8 Sep 26From a Pulitzer Prize finalist and central figure in American poetry, a landmark collection of new and selected poems chronicling five decades of work marked by moral courage, radical empathy, and unflinching witness.
Over half a century, Carolyn Forché has exemplified how a poet’s voice can cut through the cacophony of an age and speak to our inexhaustible responsibility to each other. Otherwhere spans her groundbreaking career, including the poems crafted in her early twenties from Gathering the Tribes (1976), a world of “horse-breath weather” and the whispering aspens of her grandmother’s Slovak; the “poetry of courage and compassion” (Margaret Atwood) in The Country Between Us (1981); and the elegiac realm of In the Lateness of the World (2020), with its bygone friends, besieged cities, and dreams of the displaced.
Otherwhere gathers the finest poems of Forché’s body of work, selected by the poet herself, and includes a short new collection “If there is ink,” which lights a signal fire in a state of emergency. In these new poems, Forché sifts through the new ruins of the present, conjuring the early days of an emergency where people “pretend to live / as we have always lived,” and cautioning “There are no secrets to staying completely invisible so they are not included here.”
As Hilton Als writes in The New Yorker, “Toni Morrison once observed that there is no such thing as bigger than life is big. Forché, in her profoundly ambitious work, aims to capture that bigness, line by line.”
Over half a century, Carolyn Forché has exemplified how a poet’s voice can cut through the cacophony of an age and speak to our inexhaustible responsibility to each other. Otherwhere spans her groundbreaking career, including the poems crafted in her early twenties from Gathering the Tribes (1976), a world of “horse-breath weather” and the whispering aspens of her grandmother’s Slovak; the “poetry of courage and compassion” (Margaret Atwood) in The Country Between Us (1981); and the elegiac realm of In the Lateness of the World (2020), with its bygone friends, besieged cities, and dreams of the displaced.
Otherwhere gathers the finest poems of Forché’s body of work, selected by the poet herself, and includes a short new collection “If there is ink,” which lights a signal fire in a state of emergency. In these new poems, Forché sifts through the new ruins of the present, conjuring the early days of an emergency where people “pretend to live / as we have always lived,” and cautioning “There are no secrets to staying completely invisible so they are not included here.”
As Hilton Als writes in The New Yorker, “Toni Morrison once observed that there is no such thing as bigger than life is big. Forché, in her profoundly ambitious work, aims to capture that bigness, line by line.”
- GenresPoetry
272 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication September 8, 2026
About the author
Carolyn Forché
62 books418 followersCarolyn Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1950. She studied at Michigan State University and earned an MFA from Bowling Green State University. Forché is the author of four books of poetry: Blue Hour (HarperCollins, 2004); The Angel of History (1994), which received the Los Angeles Times Book Award; The Country Between Us (1982), which received the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and was the Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets; and Gathering the Tribes (1976), which was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets by Stanley Kunitz. She is also the editor of Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (1993). Among her translations are Mahmoud Darwish's Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems with Munir Akash (2003), Claribel Alegria's Flowers from the Volcano (1983), and Robert Desnos's Selected Poetry (with William Kulik, 1991). Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1992, she received the Charity Randall Citation from the International Poetry Forum.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 1, 2026
I’ve only gotten into poetry in recent years and I mostly read new releases so I was unfamiliar with this author’s work. I’m so very happy the publisher reached out to offer me an eARC, because her poems are SUCH a treat. This collection includes some of the most stirring and beautiful poetry I’ve ever read about living through war, including the current conflict in Ukraine. This author’s poems feel like lyrical journalism or a poetic travelogue. There is such a strong sense of time and place. My absolute favourite poem in this collection is a long one. It spans pages upon pages, but each line is arranged in precise alphabetical order. Somehow it works and doesn’t feel at all contrived—in fact, it took me a few pages to realize the lines were alphabetical. This poet is truly a master of her craft!
Thank you to the publisher for giving me access to an eARC of this book!
Thank you to the publisher for giving me access to an eARC of this book!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I will confess, somewhat embarrassingly, that I was unfamiliar with the poetry of Carolyn Forché before picking up this latest collection that includes a short new collection, "If there is ink," along with author-chosen selections from "Gathering the Tribes," "In the Country Between Us," and "In the Lateness of the World."
A Pulitzer Prize finalist, Forché's work is simultaneously universal yet remarkably intimate. "If there is ink" feels as if it's written for this very time, yet unlike so many pieces I've read about this time it doesn't feel like a sledgehammer. It feels personal. It feels engaging. It feels as if she has an understanding of the collective soul of a nation.
After this initial collection, "Otherwhere" takes us back into the Forché who first coined the phrase "poetry of witness" and the Forché who seems to build upon social responsibility. There's a fierce empathy here, an awareness of her own experience and also a willingness to bear witness to other universal truths.
As I began reading, I honestly wondered if I would connect to Forché's writing as the language was so different from my own. Yet, there's such a sense of presence in her language that it often felt as if she were reading it to me.
If you're only experience with poetry is simplicity and rhyming, Forché's writing can be unsettling. Yet, as I found her rhythm I found myself moved and engaged and challenged.
While this may have been my first Forché collection, it won't be my last.
A Pulitzer Prize finalist, Forché's work is simultaneously universal yet remarkably intimate. "If there is ink" feels as if it's written for this very time, yet unlike so many pieces I've read about this time it doesn't feel like a sledgehammer. It feels personal. It feels engaging. It feels as if she has an understanding of the collective soul of a nation.
After this initial collection, "Otherwhere" takes us back into the Forché who first coined the phrase "poetry of witness" and the Forché who seems to build upon social responsibility. There's a fierce empathy here, an awareness of her own experience and also a willingness to bear witness to other universal truths.
As I began reading, I honestly wondered if I would connect to Forché's writing as the language was so different from my own. Yet, there's such a sense of presence in her language that it often felt as if she were reading it to me.
If you're only experience with poetry is simplicity and rhyming, Forché's writing can be unsettling. Yet, as I found her rhythm I found myself moved and engaged and challenged.
While this may have been my first Forché collection, it won't be my last.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I was especially pleased to receive an advance copy of Otherwhere, Carolyn Forché's upcoming poetry collection, featuring several new poems alongside selections from her earlier published works. Although I have some familiarity with the Forché's work, it has been many years since I spent concentrated time reading her poetry. This advance copy was a real treat for me.
Carolyn Forché writes powerful, courageous poems that implore us to pay attention to what’s happening in the world around us. Not to be read quickly, her collection is meaty and serious, and requires a level of immersion and attention for full impact. Her newest poems, gathered in a short collection titled “If there is ink,” feel particularly poignant and resonant in our current times. Carolyn Forché’s work is, indeed, “poetry of witness.”
Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The collection will be published September 8, 2026.
4 stars.
Carolyn Forché writes powerful, courageous poems that implore us to pay attention to what’s happening in the world around us. Not to be read quickly, her collection is meaty and serious, and requires a level of immersion and attention for full impact. Her newest poems, gathered in a short collection titled “If there is ink,” feel particularly poignant and resonant in our current times. Carolyn Forché’s work is, indeed, “poetry of witness.”
Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The collection will be published September 8, 2026.
4 stars.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
“If you read this poem, write to me
I have been to Paris since we parted.”
I love these lines after the story of her childhood friend, Victoria. Much has happened since childhood and it is embodied in this book.
This is a great collection that I would like to have in book form. Not only her newest poems but selections from other books of poetry.
Carolyn Forche’s poems always impressed me. I had the honor of hearing her read from Gathering the Tribes (1976) her very first book, in California, in my twenties, in hers. I connected with her Slavic background and loved the earthiness of her imagery. Ancestry.
Does the title Otherwhere refer to worlds gone by? Or that they are unreal— the things she has experienced? Or too real?
She has since done so much social activism and human rights work, all the while writing poetry. This book is a life.
I have been to Paris since we parted.”
I love these lines after the story of her childhood friend, Victoria. Much has happened since childhood and it is embodied in this book.
This is a great collection that I would like to have in book form. Not only her newest poems but selections from other books of poetry.
Carolyn Forche’s poems always impressed me. I had the honor of hearing her read from Gathering the Tribes (1976) her very first book, in California, in my twenties, in hers. I connected with her Slavic background and loved the earthiness of her imagery. Ancestry.
Does the title Otherwhere refer to worlds gone by? Or that they are unreal— the things she has experienced? Or too real?
She has since done so much social activism and human rights work, all the while writing poetry. This book is a life.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for both the digital galley and the printed ARC version of Otherwhere!
Carolyn Forché is a true tour de force. Half a century worth’s of poetry shared here, detailing all that she has witnessed and inherited. Her work matures with each year of life lived, filled with grief and wonder equally. I found this read to be deeply somber and elegiac as well, and took my time to process some of the heavier sections. You don’t realize how many wars can occur over 50 years until confronted with it so directly as Forché shares in this collection. She does phenomenal job of making meaning of the travesties that follows one throughout life. This is a read that feeds the soul and sticks with you.
Carolyn Forché is a true tour de force. Half a century worth’s of poetry shared here, detailing all that she has witnessed and inherited. Her work matures with each year of life lived, filled with grief and wonder equally. I found this read to be deeply somber and elegiac as well, and took my time to process some of the heavier sections. You don’t realize how many wars can occur over 50 years until confronted with it so directly as Forché shares in this collection. She does phenomenal job of making meaning of the travesties that follows one throughout life. This is a read that feeds the soul and sticks with you.
May 14, 2026
These collections of poems show Carolyn’s writing through the years. Expressing it with a poet’s voice. Reading it is like she’s telling a story. I like this book.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Review to come!
July 16, 2026
i love these collections that span over decades. being able to bear witness to a poet’s changing style, perspective, and experience is a genuine gift. how brave and beautiful it is to openly document life through someone else’s imagery, someone else’s attention. her latest work really speaks volumes about our current social climate in a way that only a poet can.
thank you to scribner books for the advanced release copy in exchange for an honest review!!
thank you to scribner books for the advanced release copy in exchange for an honest review!!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews