The Laughing Barrel | April 2027 (Forthcoming)

Alice James Books

Finalist for the 2025 Alice James Award

On The Laughing Barrel, Alice James Executive Director and Publisher Carey Salerno says: “Carson's debut mesmerizes us with its finely-tuned music, rich mythos, and extraordinarily powerful straight talk. The concept of the laughing barrel as a container for Black joy and its relationship to oppressive power structures now and during Jim Crow is palpable. Flush with formally expressive poems that draw from the infinite wealth of Blackness, these poems sink into us, texturally, becoming our bones and having always been our bones. Let there be something to redeem us, states Carson, who examines the utter and tedious endlessness of White want, asking what we stand for and what is standing in our way.”