Women from The Odyssey take center stage in purl (Finishing Line Press), a book of poems by Michele Evans that reimagines the epic, and weaves in the voices of Black women from history to present day.
Nominated for the 2025 Maya Angelou Book Award, purl delivers a musical narrative that traverses forms. Concrete and blackout poems, sonnets, a sestina, and a series of three-line “arias" move us along the journey.
In “diademia”, a crown of fifteen linked sonnets, we see women with different types of crowns, from the braids a mother gives her child, to the cloth bonnet Phillips Wheatley wears, a nymph’s palm-frond head-dressing and Medusa’s snakes. These poems weave women’s power and wisdom with the threat they live under.
In “penelopia," Odysseus' wife is a single mom, raising her son on a “concrete island rife / with strife and drunken suitors in a pack / lurking” while Odysseus posts “tweets, snaps / of infidelity”. In purl the women are just as heroic as (if not more than) the leading man.
We are thrilled to offer purl, and Evans latest collection februaries, to The Poetry Shop. Read on to hear about the books that have inspired Michele Evans over the years.
Michele Evans, welcome to The Poetry Shop 5! We always start the interview by asking: what was the first book that sparked your interest in poetry?
Maya Angelou's And Still I Rise, specifically the poem "Phenomenal Woman." I took an African American Poetry course my first semester at Smith College. This was really the first time I read something for a course by an author who looked like me. This was the early 90s. I think this was the moment I first became enamored with poetry. When I was younger and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always replied: a writer. I dreamed of penning novels that would one day be on display in a bookstore or library. I never imagined that I would become a poet or that my first two books out in the world would be poetry books. I started reading and writing poetry seriously beginning in 2020 during the Covid pandemic. I was taking a break from a novel I had been drafting off and on for five years.
I was teaching I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings to my ninth graders when it hit me that I had not written anything creative for a very long time, really since college. As a teacher, I wrote lesson plans, journal prompts, parent emails and somewhere along the way, I lost my creative writing voice. While the circumstances for my silence were not the same as Maya Angelou's, I was inspired by her courage and resilience to reclaim my writing voice.
Which poetry book are you currently reading?
black god mother this body by Raina Leon, Philadelphia's newest Poet Laureate. I am in awe of the way Leon's poems and mixed media art fill each page in this collection. With precision, Leon weaves past and present moments to illustrate the complex and divine elements of motherhood. If you ever have the opportunity to hear Leon read, do it! I promise you will not be sorry.
Is there a book on the craft of writing that you recommend to poets?
How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill (Amistad Press) by Jericho Brown and Darlene Taylor. The depth of the collection is incredible. Brown has curated valuable information from Black writers across multiple genres. Three of my favorite sections are from E. Ethelbert Miller, Rita Dove, and Nikki Giovanni. As someone who writes both fiction and poetry, this book is an invaluable resource in my craft library.
Who is a new voice in poetry that we need to check out?
I had an opportunity to hear Martheaus Perkins read last year and was blown away by the poems from his debut collection, The Grace of Black Mothers (Trio House Press, 2025). This collection has already been shortlisted for the Maya Angelou Book Award and the NAACP Image Award. His collection blends many different forms and is a powerful and poignant tribute to mother figures. Although he is a new emerging voice in poetry, his work reads like an established poet with decades and several volumes of work.
Finally, what’s a poetry book that others may not know about but deserves a shout out?
Camille Hernandez, motherlands, Finishing Line Press, 2026. Apparently, I am drawn to poems about mothering. Camille's chapbook was selected by Finishing Line Press for their New Women's Voices Series. I first heard Camille share her writing at a Watering Hole Retreat. So when her debut collection was released, I knew I had to order a copy. Using an array of imaginative forms to illustrate the complex nature of motherhood, Hernandez has created a multifaceted portrait of mothers, grandmamas, aunties, and other mother figures that is worthy of a shout out.
About Michele Evans
Michele Evans is a high school English and Creative Writing teacher and author of februaries (Yellow Arrow Publishing, 2026), a celebration of writers and poets from the Washington D.C. area who were special guests at her school's annual African American Read-In. And, Evans is the author of purl (Finishing Line Press, 2025). She considered herself a “late bloomer” and spent more than two decades teaching young people and helping them grow as readers, writers, speakers, thinkers, and learners. In the last four years, Evans has poured the same energy and creativity reserved for her students into her writing. You can read more about Michele Evans at www.awordsmithie.com.
Books referenced in this article.
februaries (Yellow Arrow Publishing, 2026) Michele Evans
purl (Finishing Line Press, 2025) Michele Evans
The Odyssey (WW Norton & Company) translated by Emily Wilson
And Still I Rise (Random House) Maya Angelou
black god mother this body (Black Freighter Press) Raina Leon
How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill (Amistad Press) Jericho Brown and Darlene Taylor
The Grace of Black Mothers (Trio House Press, 2025) Martheaus Perkins
motherlands (Finishing Line Press, 2026) Camille Hernandez
