savings time

Poems

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Pub Date Feb 04 2025 | Archive Date Mar 04 2025

Description

The Bronx born activist and poet Roya Marsh returns with a riveting exploration of Black joy, collective action, and healing.

what will come of what you leave behind?
do you
remember that time
you survived?


The poems in Roya Marsh’s second collection, savings time, wear their raw feeling and revolutionary forcefulness on their sleeves. Alternating between confrontation and celebration, Marsh trains her unsparing eye on the twinned subjects of Black rage and Black healing with practiced, musical intention.

In poems flitting between breathless prose and measured lyricism, Marsh contemplates the contradictions and challenges of Black life in America, tackling everything from police brutality and urban gentrification to queer identity, presidential elections, and pop culture, all while calling for a world where self-care, especially for Black women, is not just encouraged but mandated. “no one told the Black girl,” she writes, “‘see you later’ was a prayer / begging us survive our own erasure.”

As unforgettable on the page as when recited in Marsh’s legendary spoken-word performances, the poems in savings time are focused on both revolution and self-love, at once holding society accountable for its exploitation of Black life and honoring the joy of persisting nonetheless.

The Bronx born activist and poet Roya Marsh returns with a riveting exploration of Black joy, collective action, and healing.

what will come of what you leave behind?
do you
remember that time
you...


A Note From the Publisher

Roya Marsh is a Bronx, New York, native and a nationally recognized poet, performer, educator, and activist. She is the author of the poetry collection dayliGht, which was nominated for the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Poetry. The former Poet in Residence at Urban Word NYC, Marsh's work has been featured on NBC, BET, and Def Jam’s All Def Digital, and published in Poetry, The Village Voice, Nylon, Huffington Post, and in the collection The BreakBeat Poets Volume 2: Black Girl Magic.

Roya Marsh is a Bronx, New York, native and a nationally recognized poet, performer, educator, and activist. She is the author of the poetry collection dayliGht, which was nominated for the 2021...


Advance Praise

"Known for her spoken-word poetry, Marsh's print poems climb off the page and stand tall in many contexts. While musical and expertly paced, the poems are also notable for language that matches emotion with expert precision . . . for their rejection of veiling what must be said. . . and for the discourse that opens with Marsh’s honesty, then moves forward to ask essential questions of us all." —Sara Verstynen, Booklist

"If you point me in the direction of the nearest church / I'd run inside and scream Roya Marsh's name. // For if God saves her, / she will save us. // She is not writing for the sake of poetry,But for the sake of our souls." —Jasmine Mans, author of Black Girl, Call Home

"Roya Marsh has offered a collection of work for those who are ready to feel something, to remember something, to imagine something. savings time invites us, above all, to be honest with ourselves about the world we live in—Marsh gives us the language to do so." —Rachel Cargle, author of A Renaissance of Our Own

"Scientists have reported that time is literally speeding up. However, Roya Marsh's new work reminds us that it is Black, queer, artists who bend time, who sculpt it with language and truth. These poems ask us to reclaim our time; to tenderly coax the future from the hands of so much oppression. This work reminds us, it is indeed us, who will save time." —Sonya Renee Taylor, author of The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“In a world of too much curation that desperately clings to performative patterns and homogeneous hashtags, Roya Marsh’s savings time is your beloved, your breaking heart, your own mirror gently beckoning you out of every useless façade of restraint or good behavior and back into the light of all that still lingers. Roya’s poems remind us of what these poems can do: uncover, un-shame, and unbury.” —Candice Iloh, author of Salt the Water

“I started reading Roya Marsh’s words and after the first few pages had to put the book down. It was too powerful! As I continued, the pacing made me feel like I was on the A train between 59th and 125th—that long stretch of speed with no stops in between, where I get lost in my thoughts gazing at fellow passengers, while the car shakes my body into a jiggle. That is how savings time made me feel. Roya Marsh’s writing is unapologetically from the block without the code switch, expressed for our people to provoke, inspire, and uplift. If only the world could be this intelligent and empathetic.” —Bobbito García, a.k.a. Kool Bob Love

savings time is a book you gift to your favorite cousin, the one who is right on the verge of a breakthrough but just can’t get the words out of their mouth. Because it is not just a book of poems. It is a promise. Roya Marsh writes like she really believes we can be free. I believe her.” —EbonyJanice Moore, author of All the Black Girls Are Activists

"In savings time, Roya Marsh sharpens her words like a razor, cutting through the layers of identity, trauma, and defiance with a voice that is as relentless as it is tender. These poems are not just read but felt, each one a visceral reminder of the ongoing struggle to exist fully in a world that too often attempts to erase you. Marsh's poetry collection is a fierce, unapologetic and bluesy anthem for anyone who’s ever been told they’re too much or not enough." —Frederick Joseph, national bestselling author of We Alive, Beloved

"Known for her spoken-word poetry, Marsh's print poems climb off the page and stand tall in many contexts. While musical and expertly paced, the poems are also notable for language that matches...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780374615796
PRICE $17.00 (USD)
PAGES 128

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Average rating from 6 members


Featured Reviews

I can’t fully encapsulate the emotions I had reading this collection and how thankful I am to FSG, MCD, Netgalley, and most importantly Roya Marsh.

When I say I want authenticity, this is what I mean. When I say I want something bold, this is what I mean. Marsh doesn’t hold back and doesn’t expect the reader to either. It’s a collection that has just as much bark as it does bite and demands you listen. The level of lyricism is insane. Truly encompassing all things black. Black existence, black pain, black women, black pride, black identity, black reckoning! This is one of those collections you just simply need to pick up and then tell a friend to get a copy too.

I felt rage, I felt community, I felt liberation, and I felt seen. These poems are both a call out to violence against the black body and spirit, as well as an homage to culture, to hip hop, to black women, to black joy, to revolution, to collective action! I’m truly excited to see more readers pick this one up.

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