Florida Water is a collection of poems that, like the cleansing waters of spiritual baths, rinse, reflect, and reveal the raw truths that lie within.
In this vulnerable meditation, aja monet reflects on her migration to South Florida in search of love, connection, and belonging, unearthing the delicate balance between the poet, lover, and community organizer. These poems lay bare the tender dance of relationships, entwining the personal with the political, as they confront the state’s fractured history of racial prejudice, marooned peoples, and the unruly forces of nature.
In Florida Water, each poem is an artifact—an offering from her time spent wading through the rising tides of climate change, heartbreak, and systemic violence. With each line, monet immerses us deeper into the water, where the currents of memory, struggle, and survival pull us toward both despair and hope.
aja monet is a Caribbean-American poet, performer, and educator from Brooklyn. She has been awarded the Andrea Klein Willison Prize for Poetry and the Nuyorican Poet’s Café Grand Slam title, as well as the New York City YWCA’s “One to Watch Award.” She is the author of The Black Unicorn Sings and the co-editor, with Saul Williams, of Chorus: A Literary Mixtape. She lives in Little Haiti, Miami, where she is a co-founder of Smoke Signals Studio and dedicates her time merging arts and culture in community organizing with the Dream Defenders and the Community Justice Project.
Publication date: June 3, 2025
“This is aja monet at her most lucid and vulnerable, offering an intimate portrait in love, drowning in it, and kissing us each time she comes up for air. The politics of love and memory betrothed to a poet's passion to touch and be touched by perspective—and in real ways—she holds herself in her own arms, yet somehow we, all our loved ones and blessed ancestors, fit in her embrace. Here is where maturity and grace never forgets to remind us of its edge, its pain, and unanswered questions—where a moment in time finds its timelessness. Here is a poet ripening beyond her bruises, clear-eyed and lovingly, sprinkling holy water on angels and demons alike.”
—Saul Williams
“aja monet always opens the portal. Her open-hearted, wisdom-thick voice takes us backwards into a soul movement where everything felt possible and forward into the loving future we deserve at the same time. Read her work and prepare to time travel into the possibilities of your own heart and our beloved community.”
—Alexis Pauline Gumbs
“The stewards of this land and the Africans dragged here tell us water is life. Channeling ancestral wisdom, aja monet shows us water is also love, power, reflection, blue(s), bodies. Water heals, cleanses, blesses; it gives life and can take it away. Water is older than history and yet never forgets. aja monet’s poems are water, and these poems were born at the crossroads of the world, where Turtle Island meets the Caribbean Sea. In this death-dealing world, Florida Water will quench our collective thirst for living.”
—Robin D. G. Kelley
“These poems are rooted in the tradition of Black womanist poetics; therefore, they got the audacity to remember, protest, and soothe. If we are honest global citizens, we know that pain can be architecture. Consequently, Florida Water is a surrealist poet’s demolition gift. This book is to be read aloud, poured over, and returned to whenever the soul needs ceremony.”
—Mahogany L. Browne
“aja monet is a poet’s poet. She uses the language like a painter. Her pen is a brush creating pastel colors of remembrance and how the world is now. There is pain, hope, and love in her work. You can almost taste and truly feel it. She is true to the very idea of what poetry does. She speaks to the mind and soul of the reader. She breaks down the simple truths of the flaws of America and the bitter taste it leaves in your mouth. She believes in community and the tenderness of being loved. Her poetry demands that you think and be honest with yourself. She is a revolutionary with an arsenal of things to do to bring about change. Her love and grief for humanity is paramount. Her hopes and dreams are for a better world. Her childhood innocence makes her guilty of fighting for justice.”
—Abiodun Oyewole
“By turns bracing and delicate as gossamer, monet’s latest is a vulnerable exploration of love, loss, and the revolutionary spirit of community.”
—Publishers Weekly
