“Inspiring. . . . An urgent, much-needed social vision for poetry today.”
—Margaret Ronda, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Social Poetics shines a light on a fraught and inspiring history of radical participatory cultural experiments that may be of use to socialist culture in the present.”
—William Harris, Jacobin
“If a creative writing text ever raised a call to the barricades, it’s this one. . . . Anyone can use a breath of fresh air, a bracing reminder of art’s power to change the world.”
—John Domini, The Brooklyn Rail
“A compelling exploration of radical working-class poetry. . . . [Social Poetics] invites us down a path where solidarity through poetic community can lead to radical social transformation.”
—Phillip Metres, Jewish Currents
“Nowak’s focus on workshops, from Attica to the Worker Justice Center of New York, powerfully re-envisions what literary communities might look like, and how they can expand the range of poetic expression, enliven social movements and foster solidarity across oceans.”
—Harris Feinsod, In These Times
“Both an attempt to recuperate a forgotten literary canon (literature made for and inside working-class struggle) and an effort to summon forth new structures of organization, expression, and literary culture.”
—Alex Gallo-Brown, Poetry Northwest
“Social Poetics is, in a way, Nowak’s call to arms, his manifesto—the guiding principles behind decades of work and a roadmap for the work of the future.”
—Amish Trivedi, Iowa Review
“Social Poetics focuses on the history of poetry workshops from the perspective of working-class people who attempted to spark social change despite being largely overlooked by society.”
—Abby Foster, Chronogram
“Nowak’s writing is attuned to the needs of today in what feels like a new horizon taking shape, part of a larger appreciation for the poetics of relationality and experience.”
—Joe Rupprecht, Full Stop
“[Social Poetics] asks: what happens when poetry becomes a central subject of the working class? How do social poetics push back on what is naturalized into non-existence under capitalism?”
—ATM Magazine
"An invaluable archive of an otherwise little-documented field.”
—Poetry Foundation
“Mark Nowak testifies to the urgency and intimacy of poetry in our prisons, union halls, and workers’ centers. . . .This supple, comprehensive book is a study in the poetics of bearing witness, bearing tools, and bearing possibilities.”
—Terrance Hayes
“Nowak crafts a transformative workshop for the collective. This is an important record of how the people’s power, poetry, and history maintain us and the beauty of our world(s).”
—Joy James
