If poets are preachers, aja monet’s reading for her upcoming Florida Water was church. It was a packed house at Isola Brooklyn in Williamsburg as Dr. Mahogany Browne took to the stage to welcome the crowd, introduce the Grammy-nominated poet, and remind all in attendance that live poetry is not meant to be enjoyed silently. “This ain’t YouTube,” she said Wednesday night, inviting the crowd to respond out loud with “oooohs,” “woooows,” and “wooord,” as needed.

And did.

monet, who hasn’t released a collection of poetry since 2017’s My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter, graced the stage donning a keffiyeh and her signature blue-black curls. Florida Water explores the toll of liberation work. How the urgency of collective struggle can leave artists with little energy for their own art. Some poems in the collection stretch like prose, while others punctuate like memory fragments. monet also paid homage to her contemporaries, Lucile Clifton and Ntozake Shange, and honored her late friend, actor and producer Chad Gittens.