Blessing the Boats Selection titles spotlight new poetry collections by women of color. The series is named in honor of Lucille Clifton (1936–2010), whose poetry collection Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988–2000 (BOA Editions, 2000), received the National Book Award.

Lucille Clifton's writings of Black life and Black female life have shaped a sense of what is possible for so many. In the poem that begins "won't you celebrate with me," she writes: "born in babylon / both nonwhite and woman / what did i see to be except myself?" Blessing the Boats Selections titles walk behind and grow out of the poetry of those lines.

By spotlighting new poetry collections by women of color, our hope is that the Blessing the Boats Selections will further facilitate encounters between readers and writers of some of the most extraordinary texts of our time.