The Sealey Challenge for 2020 is complete. 31 poetry books and chapbooks in 31 days. These are the books, in the order in which I read them. I listed them on Instagram and Twitter as I read them, but this is the the first and only photo of all of the books in one place. According to the statistics at Library Thing I have just over 270 poetry books and chapbooks in my library, and the 31 I read over the past month have put a significant dent in my TBR pile.

Traditionally the Sealey Challenge is held in August, so I have eight months to collect 30 more poetry books so I can go into the challenge with a new stack of unread material. Or maybe I will just hit a few used book stores and buy 30 back issues of Poetry magazine, since each issue is essentially a good-sized anthology of contemporary poetry.

I regrettably do not have any books by Nicole Sealey, the founder of The Sealey Challenge, but I hope to remedy that before the end of this year.

Here is the list of titles, in reading order, with links to the author’s information pages:

2020.10.01 – Rogin-Roper, Leah – Two Truths and a Lie
2020.10.02 – Danos, Stephen – Missing Slides
2020.10.03 – Mandelstam, Osip – Voronezh Notebooks
2020.10.04 – Almeida, Alexis – I Have Never Been Able to Sing
2020.10.05 – Kaneko, W. Todd – This Is How the Bone Sings
2020.10.06 – Coolidge, Sarah (ed.) – Home: New Arabic Poetry
2020.10.07 – Cooper, Wyn – Chaos Is the New Calm
2020.10.08 – ortiz, mónica teresa – autobiography of a semiromantic anarchist
2020.10.09 – Brace, Kristin – The Farthest Dreaming Hill
2020.10.10 – de Alba, Cassandra – habitats
2020.10.11 – Le Guin, Ursula – Wild Angels
2020.10.12 – Matthews, Airea D. – Simulacra
2020.10.13 – Rogal, Lisa – Feed Me Weird Things
2020.10.14 – Amezcua, Eloisa– On Not Screaming
2020.10.15 – Stafford, William – My Name is William Tell
2020.10.16 – Stack, Garrett – Yeoman’s Work
2020.10.17 – Brandt, Emily – Sleeptalk or Not At All
2020.10.18 – Olszewska, Daniela – Answering Machine
2020.10.19 – Marinovich, Filip – Wolfman Librarian
2020.10.20 – Harris, Joseph – Logically Thinking
2020.10.21 – Harrison, Jim – Collected Ghazals
2020.10.22 – Bettis, Christine – Burnout Paradise
2020.10.23 – Gleason, Rachel – New Kind of Rebellion
2020.10.24 – Khayyam, Omar – The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
2020.10.25 – Cáceres, Omar – Defense of the Idol
2020.10.26 – Chang, Kristin – Past Lives, Future Bodies
2020.10.27 – Goff, Nichole – Aluminum Necropolis
2020.10.28 – Gurton-Wachter, Anna – Blank Blank Blues
2020.10.29 – Burns, Megan – Sleepwalk With Me
2020.10.30 – Trier-Walker, Amy Jo – Trembling Ourselves Into Trees
2020.10.31 – Harrison, Jim – Letters to Yesenin

And now, time to put down the poetry books and pick up the pen for National Novel Writing Month, which starts in just under six hours.