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Literary Titan Book Award: Poetry
The Literary Titan Book Award recognizes poets who demonstrate exceptional artistry and proficiency and push the boundaries of language and expression. The recipients are poets who excel in their technical skills and evoke deep emotional responses, challenge thoughts, and illuminate new perspectives through their work. The award honors those who contribute to the literary landscape with their unique voices and powerful words.
Award Recipients
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
Is There Not A Cause? (2014-2025)
Reading Is There Not a Cause? felt like diving into eleven years of someone’s life all at once. The book moves through storms, heartbreak, faith, rage, pride, fear, temptation, joy, reflection, and rebirth. The poems hit like quick flashes of memory, then long moments of confession, then hard truths about a broken world. The author brings God, struggle, trauma, race, desire, loyalty, and self-accountability into view and spins them around until they blur into something raw and human. I finished it feeling like I had witnessed someone fight through their own darkness and keep getting back up, no matter how messy the fall.
As I worked through the poems, I kept feeling this heat in my chest. The writing is straight from the gut, no filter at all, and sometimes it shook me because the voice is so exposed. There are moments when the author talks about faith with steady hope, then in the next breath, he crumbles under frustration. That mix felt real to me. Life flips like that. I appreciated how he never pretended to be perfect and never tried to make his pain sound pretty. Some poems burned hot with anger. Others were soft in a way that caught me off guard. I liked that unpredictability. It made the book feel alive.
The book hits you with one emotion after another. I admired that intensity. It felt like the writer refused to hold anything back. The honesty gave the work its power. I also enjoyed the wide swing between personal reflection and social commentary. One page dives into relationships that fell apart. Another page calls out violence, corruption, and spiritual decay. It is chaotic at times, but the chaos felt intentional. It mirrors the world we live in.
I walked away feeling like this book is for readers who want truth more than comfort. It is for anyone who has battled themselves, prayed for change, fallen hard, gotten back up, and kept moving even when life hit them from every angle. If you like poetry that talks plain and feels heavy and relatable, this book will speak to you. And if you are in a season where you need to feel seen, this collection has plenty to offer.
Pages: 128 | ASIN : B0FP76VCCM
Lalibela
Lalibela is a book of poems that wander through memory, love, pain, Blackness, faith, and survival. The pieces move like snapshots. One moment you are in a kitchen full of noise and life, then suddenly you are in protest lines, then in the quiet of a bedroom at dawn. The writing drifts between tenderness and ache. It lifts up children, calls out to lovers, mourns wounds, and still finds space for hope. The book feels like a long conversation with a friend who has lived deeply.
The voice here is raw in a way that feels familiar. The plain language makes the emotion hit harder. I could hear the author’s breath in the short lines and the pauses. Some poems read like whispered confessions. Others feel like a shout in the street. I found myself thinking of certain imagery long after I turned the page. The children who glow under the sun. The exhausted women who work three jobs. The hearts that learn to love with both hands. The neighborhoods full of cracked paint and stubborn joy. These moments made me sit back for a second and just feel.
I also loved the way the author writes about Black life. There is pride and rage and humor and longing. The poems praise Black boys and girls with a kind of awe. They honor Black mothers with reverence. They admit to fear and sorrow. They insist on dreaming even when the world tries to shut the dreams away. I felt a kind of warmth in those pages. I felt seen. The writing leans into common objects and everyday scenes.
I would recommend Lalibela to readers who want poetry that talks straight and loves hard. People who care about community, identity, and the quiet bravery of getting through each day will find something here. It is a book for anyone who wants to feel close to another human being for a little while.
Pages: 70 | ASIN : B0FG147WCC
Bethesda
Bethesda is a collection of poems that moves through faith, pain, identity, womanhood, and longing with a voice that is raw and unguarded. The book feels like a spiritual and emotional journey, one that circles back to God again and again while navigating the heaviness of lived experience. Each poem stands on its own, but together they read like a layered confession. Grief, hope, Blackness, gender, memory, and divine yearning all braid together. The writing pulls from moments of despair and moments of revelation. The themes feel deeply personal yet still universal.
Reading this book stirred something in me. I kept feeling the author’s honesty press against me. Her words feel unfiltered in a way that made me stop more than once just to sit with the weight of what she had said. Sometimes the writing felt soft and vulnerable, then suddenly sharp, almost like a cry I wasn’t prepared for. There is a rhythm in these pages that made me sway between empathy and awe. The way she writes about faith hit me hardest. It felt like I was watching someone reach for God through fog. I felt the hunger in the lines about doubt. I felt the exhaustion in the moments she confessed her confusion.
I also found myself loving the poems that center on Black identity, womanhood, and generational ache. There’s courage in the writing and also a kind of weariness that comes from living too much too early. Sometimes the poems wander. Sometimes they dig straight down. But the variation gave the book its shape. I enjoyed how the language feels both poetic and conversational. There’s an unpolished beauty here. Some lines left me feeling protective of the speaker, and other lines felt like a rallying cry. I especially appreciated how the writer handles inner conflict. It isn’t neat. It isn’t solved. It just lives on the page.
I walked away feeling like this book is for anyone who has ever fought with themselves and still tried to choose hope. It’s for readers who want poetry that feels lived in and not curated. It’s for people who are navigating faith or identity or heartbreak and need a voice that says I’ve been there too. I would recommend Bethesda to those who enjoy emotional, spiritual, and introspective poetry that doesn’t shy away from the hard parts of life.
Pages: 109 | ASIN : B0F7HZJX6D
Dissociative Effect
Jacqueline Redmer’s Dissociative Effect is a raw, searing collection of poems shaped by pain, memory, healing, and hope. Part memoir, part emotional excavation, the book moves through themes of trauma, womanhood, embodiment, medicine, and spiritual searching. It opens with a deeply personal introduction that lays the groundwork for what follows. Redmer’s poetry is not a passive reflection, but an active, pulsing lifeline. Across three sections, Pathos, Diagnoses, and ad sanadum, Redmer travels inward, dissects her story, and leaves nothing unexamined. It’s at once intimate and universal. Clinical and poetic. Grief-stricken and triumphant.
Reading this book was not easy. There’s a kind of precision here that only a physician-poet could pull off. Some poems cut like scalpels. Others whisper truths I didn’t know I needed to hear. Redmer doesn’t flinch from the hard stuff, body shame, sexual trauma, mental illness, motherhood, aging, and invisibility. In “dis-comfort food” and “the crime scene,” she writes about girlhood and the betrayal of the body with such clarity, I found myself holding my breath. And then there’s “listen,” a poem that addresses the inability to scream during assault, and it just wrecked me. Her language is so direct. No wasted words. No prettying up the truth. But it’s not just pain for pain’s sake, there’s deep intelligence and heart in these pages.
What stuck with me most was the feeling of coming home to something hard. That ache of knowing and not knowing. Redmer has a gift for taking ordinary moments, eating a peach, watching rain, yoga class, and flipping them inside out to reveal emotional depth you didn’t expect. She made me think about all the ways we dissociate to survive, and what it means to come back to our own bodies. I felt comforted by her honesty, her imperfection, her willingness to say what so many of us only feel. Her poems gave me language for things I thought were unspeakable. And at the same time, I laughed, nodded, and underlined like crazy.
I’d recommend Dissociative Effect to anyone who has lived through trauma, especially women, caregivers, clinicians, survivors, and seekers. If you’ve ever felt too much or not enough, this book will find you where you are. Redmer doesn’t offer tidy answers, but she opens a door. You walk through.
Pages: 86 | ISBN: 1962082822
Words for a Wounded World: Scriptural Poems of Truth and Hope to Awaken, Convict, and Heal
Mark Richard’s Words for a Wounded World is a striking collection of scriptural poetry that bridges devotion and art. Structured in four parts, it journeys from the foundations of faith to the trials of endurance, calling readers toward reflection, repentance, and renewal. Each poem is rooted deeply in Scripture and followed by supporting verses, reflection questions, and prayer prompts, turning what might have been a simple poetry book into a comprehensive devotional experience.
The opening poem, “From Fig Leaves to White Robes,” immediately reveals Richard’s strength as both a poet and teacher. His retelling of humanity’s fall and redemption through Christ captures the tension between sin and grace with vivid simplicity. The combination of biblical narrative and lyrical rhythm sets the tone for the rest of the collection, earnest, reverent, and unashamedly focused on God’s mercy.
Throughout the book, Richard writes with pastoral sincerity. Many of the poems were originally written for individuals he ministered to, and that intimacy infuses each line with authenticity. His words are direct and urgent, reflecting his desire to reach those caught in spiritual struggle. At times, the tone feels intense, more prophetic than poetic, but it remains grounded in compassion rather than condemnation.
Several poems stand out for their emotional resonance. “Think Again, Let Christ Define” is particularly compelling in its treatment of identity and mental renewal, reminding readers that transformation begins in the mind: “Your thoughts, dear soul, are not benign—They shape your heart, your path, your mind.” Similarly, “Believe in Prayer” offers a tender reflection on faith’s persistence, inviting readers to approach God with both confidence and humility.
By the end, it becomes clear that Words for a Wounded World is not meant for hurried reading. Its structure, poem, Scripture, reflection, and journaling space encourage contemplation and engagement. It is ideal for those seeking a devotional guide that combines poetic beauty with spiritual depth.
This book will particularly resonate with readers who appreciate Scripture-centered writing and desire to deepen their personal walk with God. Thoughtful, sincere, and rooted in faith, Richard’s work reminds us that even in a wounded world, the Word still heals.
Pages: 135 | ISBN : 13: 978-1-63746-564-6
Amethyst
Amethyst is a hauntingly beautiful tapestry of poetry that weaves together identity, pain, rebirth, and the search for meaning. Divided into chromatic sections named after shades of purple, each representing a facet of human experience, the book feels like an odyssey through the inner worlds of selfhood and survival. It moves from loss and trauma to reclamation and transcendence, painting scenes of queerness, masculinity, intimacy, and existential ache. Every poem feels like a fragment of a larger confession, tender yet defiant, fragile yet ferociously self-aware. Author Fernando Rover Jr.’s voice is raw, rhythmic, and unapologetically human, like someone whispering truth through a cracked mirror.
Reading this book shook something in me. The language hits hard, sometimes uncomfortably close. There’s this honest grit in how Rover writes about love and pain, as if he’s bleeding on purpose to show that healing isn’t always graceful. Some lines feel like quiet prayers; others explode with profanity and rebellion. I love how he blends vulnerability with resistance, how “Problem Child” snarls right before “Father Hunger” breaks your heart. There’s a rhythm here that doesn’t care about convention. He’s not writing poetry for classrooms or critics, he’s writing to survive. And I felt that. The work feels alive in its contradictions, full of sadness and rage, yet bursting with this strange hope that we can build beauty from our bruises.
But what struck me even more was how Amethyst feels like both a mirror and a map. It asks hard questions about who we are when the world makes us feel unworthy. Sometimes it feels like a séance with the self, a way of calling lost parts of you back home. I caught myself rereading lines just to let them sting again. The collection is fearless in its queerness and in its refusal to make trauma tidy. There’s humor in the mess, too, and flashes of warmth that feel earned.
I’d recommend Amethyst to anyone who’s been cracked open by life and wants to believe that brokenness can still be beautiful. It’s for readers who crave raw emotion and unfiltered truth, who don’t mind getting lost in someone else’s chaos to find their own calm.
Pages: 67 | ASIN : B0FX9F4Y41
Literary Titan Book Award: Poetry
The Literary Titan Book Award recognizes poets who demonstrate exceptional artistry and proficiency and push the boundaries of language and expression. The recipients are poets who excel in their technical skills and evoke deep emotional responses, challenge thoughts, and illuminate new perspectives through their work. The award honors those who contribute to the literary landscape with their unique voices and powerful words.
Award Recipients
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
LITERARY TITAN 