The Collection Plate: Poems

A deeply wrought and joyful debut poetry collection from an exciting new voice 

Looping exultantly through the overlapping experiences of girlhood, Blackness, sex, and personhood in America, award-winning essayist and poet Kendra Allen braids together personal narrative and cultural commentary, wrestling with the beauty and brutality to be found between mothers and daughters, young women and the world, Black bodies and white space, virginity and intrusion, prison and freedom, birth and death. Most of all, The Collection Plate explores both how we collect and erase the voices, lives, and innocence of underrepresented bodies—and behold their pleasure, pain, and possibility

Both formally exciting and a delight to read, The Collection Plate is a testament to Allen’s place as the voice of a generation—and a witness to how we come into being in the twenty-first century. 

“These poems blend personal narrative with social commentary to explore the joy, pain, and underrepresented voices of Black womanhood in America. It’s a passionate, fresh, and deeply southern collection that introduces a new voice you won’t want to miss.” - Book Riot

"Allen not only vividly captures the experiences of growing up in a Black religious family in the South, transporting readers through specific childhood memories and beautiful tributes, but also provides powerful cultural commentaries. Recommended for all collections." - Library Journal

“Kendra Allen's Collection Plate is formally and linguistically invigorating, intertwining and juxtaposing personal and cultural histories to take the reader on a vivid emotional exploration. Allen considers Black exploitation, water crises, white feminism, and the notion of equality, among other failures in and of America. . . . Allen is in command of Our Father's, and other deadly forces', presence in her narratives, which she often wields with searing humor. This is a valuable offering; Collection Plate brings to light the dismantling capacity of laughing in the face of power, while directly examining it with eyes fired open.”  - Emily Jungmin Yoon, author of A Cruelty Special to Our Species

“Award-winning essayist Kendra Allen's first poetry collection, Collection Plate, is formally and linguistically invigorating, intertwining and juxtaposing personal and cultural histories to take the reader on a vivid emotional exploration. Allen considers Black exploitation, water crises, white feminism, and the notion of equality, among other failures in and of America, reminding the reader of the function of poetry as a form of critique. The speaker's challenging view of God, ‘Our Father,’ whose contradictions and failures manifest in human men, threads through her relationships with the mother, grandmother, death, and sex, masterfully and inventively orchestrating tension throughout the pages. Though Our Father looms or at lurks in the corners of many poems throughout, Allen's bold language demonstrates that she is in command of Our Father's, and other deadly forces', presence in her narratives, which she often wields with searing humor. This is a valuable offering; Collection Plate brings to light the dismantling capacity of laughing in the face of power, while directly examining it with eyes fired open.”  - Emily Jungmin Yoon, author of A Cruelty Special to Our Species

“Gospel traditions, erotic need, African American vernacular English and plenty of blank space on well-organized pages. . . . Allen excels—like Clifton, like Robert Burns—as she shifts into and out of standard English.”  - New York Times Book Review

"A spectacular debut poetry collection . . . marks the arrival of a singular new talent, a poet whose lyricism is artfully matched by the depths of the emotions she conveys. Allen's poems explore themes of Blackness, womanhood, sex, desire, pain, and belonging, offering glimpses of the casual cruelty and sublime beauty that swim just under the surface of all our experiences.” - Refinery 29

"Kendra Allen's poems examine how religion and hierarchy inform the spaces Black women and girls inhabit—and how we blow past those boundaries, swimming toward the horizon even as the undertow threatens to pull us in another direction." - Essence

“The Collection Plate introduces Kendra Allen as a poet to watch. . . . Allen shines a light on the spaces that connect and divide us, coalescing into an electric portrait of joy and pain.” - Time

“The Collection Plate is as close as we can get to those looming Black spaces beyond and before language. A book shouldn't be able to do this but Kendra Allen is a conjurer as much as she is one of the most complete writers we have ever read.”  - Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy and Long Division