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The 115th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets is a lyrical and polyvocal exploration of what it means to fight for yourself​

What Noise Against the Cane is a lyric quest for belonging and freedom, weaving political resistance, Caribbean folklore, immigration and the realities of Black life in America. Desiree C. Bailey begins by reworking the epic in an oceanic narrative of bondage and liberation in the midst of the Haitian Revolution. The poems move into the contemporary Black diaspora, probing the mythologies of home, belief, nation and womanhood. Series judge Carl Phillips observes that Bailey's “poems argue for hope and faith equally. . . . These are powerful poems, indeed, and they make a persuasive argument for the transformative powers of steady defiance.”

Desiree C. Bailey is the author of What Noise Against the Cane (Yale University Press, 2021), winner of the 2020 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. She is also the author of the fiction chapbook In Dirt or Saltwater (O'clock Press, 2016) and has short stories and poems published in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, American Short Fiction, Callaloo, the Academy of American Poets and elsewhere. Desiree has a BA from Georgetown University, an MFA in Fiction from Brown University and is an MFA Poetry candidate at New York University. She has received fellowships from the Norman Mailer Center, Kimbilio Fiction, Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Poets House, The Conversation and Princeton in Africa. She has received awards from the New York State Council on the Arts/New York Foundation for the Arts and Poets & Writers. Desiree was born in Trinidad and Tobago, and grew up in Queens, New York. She is currently an English teacher in Brooklyn, New York.

Charleen McClure is a poet and educator. Her work has been published in Kinfolks Quarterly, Muzzle, Poetry Project, and elsewhere. A Fulbright scholar and a 2020 Rona Jaffe Writer's Award Recipient, she has received fellowships from the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, VONA, The Conversation, and Cave Canem. She currently resides in New York City.

EG Asher’s first book of poetry, Natality, was published by Noemi Press in 2017. Asher’s writing has received support from the Stadler Center at Bucknell University, the Yiddish Book Center, Asylum Arts, and the Kenyon Review. Asher has taught writing workshops and literature courses at Brown, Bucknell, and New York Universities, as well as at YIVO. Born in New York, Asher is currently a PhD candidate at NYU.

Nabila Lovelace is a first-generation Queens born poet, her people hail from Trinidad & Nigeria. Sons of Achilles, her debut book of poems, is out now through YesYes Books. You can currently find her kicking it in Tuscaloosa.