In the debut author’s The Poet Empress (Bramble, Jan.), set in a world where poetry is magic but women aren’t allowed to read, a peasant girl becomes a prince’s concubine.

“I had been thinking about this night, and I wanted to write this poem,” Myers said. “So I sat down and did it. I felt this ...

The final one, Visiting, is a response to the Irish photographer Amelia Stein’s exquisite photo of a high wooden shutter ...