Blood on the Leaves

Blood on the Leaves by Hope Wabuke is a searing and lyrical poetry collection that explores the intimate, haunted relationship between Blackness and the natural world. At once a site of refuge and rupture, nature emerges as both witness to generational trauma and a space of beauty, survival, and fierce possibility.Hewn from historical record and personal experience, these poems unearth the brutal legacy of slavery and the enduring persistence of systemic racism, tracing how violence echoes through land, body, and bloodline. Wabuke weaves history, science, and the environment into the personal—examining gender, motherhood, identity, and the Black body as sites of resistance and remembrance. Blood on the Leaves stands as a powerful testament to the Black experience, survival, memory, and the enduring power of love.

Hope Wabuke is the author of two full-length poetry collections Blood on the Leaves (Boa Editions, 2026) and The Body Family (Haymarket Books). She has won fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Barbara Deming Memorial Foundation, and the Fulbright Foundation, among others. She currently serves as a consulting editor for the African Poetry Book Fund and Susan J. Rosowski Associate Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She live is Lincoln, NE.