Night Watch

A new poetry collection about loss, legacy and African American history, from the poetry editor of the New Yorker

*Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry 2025*

'Keeping up with him is like trying to keep up with Bob Dylan or Prince in their primes' New York Times

Kevin Young's new poetry collection, written over sixteen years, tells stories of community, nationhood and resistance, inspired in part by other lives. He starts in the bayous of Louisiana, and speaks from the voices of Millie and Christine McCoy, the conjoined African American 'Carolina Twins' - born into enslavement who later toured the world as free women.

Young writes of grief and hope as familiar yet surprising states: 'It's like a language, / loss -', he writes, 'learnt only / by living - there - '. Evoking the history of poetry, Young's new collection is defiant and playful, elegant and devastating - his voice shaping sorrow with music, humour and wit.

'One of the most important poets of his generation' Washington Post