Doggerel is a revelatory meditation on Blackness, masculinity, and vulnerability from one of poetry’s boldest voices.
Reginald Dwayne Betts is our foremost chronicler of the ways prison shapes and transforms American life. In Doggerel, Betts examines this subject through a prosaic, and equally rich lens: dogs. Simultaneously philosophical and playful, Doggerel is a mediation on fatherhood, falling in love, and friendship, and those who accompany us on our walks through life. Balancing political critique with personal experience, Betts once again shows us “how poems can be enlisted to radically disrupt narrative” (Dan Chaisson, New Yorker)—and, in doing so, reveals the world anew.
“Doggerel is an apt name for this lovely collection, with the canine-hidden-in-plain-sight in its title and coursing through so many of the poems. Betts manages to capture essences―of memory, of hope or loss, of oft-overlooked everydayness―in a way that feels surprising and familiar at once.”
— Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know
When Regrets Become Wings
Listen to Dwayne given an 18 minute Ted Talk in a Virginia prison.
Random Acts of Poetry
It all starts with an idea. What if poetry might really matter—in your life, today? Dwayne began walking up to strangers on the street and asking permission to share a poem. When is the last time someone shared a poem with you? This is what happened when people said yes.