Willie Lee Kinard III is a Black nonbinary poet, designer, educator & musician forged in Newberry, South Carolina. Holding an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh, their musings include gospel surrealism, Black romance & superstition. A Fellow of The Watering Hole & a Pushcart Prize nominee, their written work appears (or will soon) in Obsidian, Poem-a-Day, Best New Poets, The Rumpus, & elsewhere. Go see ‘bout them at www.williekinard.com

“After reading this collection, we have been gifted a new name: with this silk-spun debut, Willie Lee Kinard III has named a new model of form within and across the literary landscape. I say my own name, and from the sounding emerges the promise of being back in my body.”
—Daniella Toosie-Watson, The Cincinnati Review

“Orders of Service is a tremendous debut, and Kinard quickly signals himself as a skilled practitioner of voice and textuality. This is a collection you will want to read and read again.”
—Ronnie K. Stephens, The Poetry Question

“an explosive debut that deals in sonic aftershocks lit up by wit and homage.”
—Rebecca Morgan Frank, Harriet Books

“Willie Lee Kinard III’s astonishing debut collection braids mythology, sex and desire, gutbucket and gospel—defying outdated notions of bodies, binaries, the black church, and the natural world. These verses render testimonies so electric, you can’t help but shout. Kinard knows caring begins in language. He knows black boys crafted of fable can become sharp-witted and tender lovers and loving men. Orders of Service cuts so clean and deep you’ll find yourself several pages in before you notice blood on your fingers.”
—Yona Harvey

“Orders of Service is at once music populating a sermon, a body gone stone after intercourse, and the queering bravado of a choir. Willie Lee Kinard III has a sultry way with the poem as he makes and re-makes it, bringing to the fore “a happy / kind of / blue,” a blue like being country, sweet, and in a kind of fragmented prayer. How do we get to love?, the poems ask, complicating that prayer. This book is as fierce and rich as the rigorous linguistic play that makes Orders of Service already Kinardian.”
—Dawn Lundy Martin 

“A Willie Lee Kinard III poem is a fountain of sound and syntax sprung from a river in South Carolina. A Willie Lee Kinard III poem can teach you how to scream properly and how to change a tire in Babel. It displays the sensual fevers of Jean Toomer and the vernacular lucidity of Alice Walker. A Willie Lee Kinard III poem has room for Mariah Carey, Cesária Évora, SWV, the BeeGees and James Cleveland. It vibrates like a gospel-fugue sung by a chorus of fireflies. Orders of Service is a collection of Kinard’s spells, erasures, lavender linguistics; it’s a score of swerving feels and scriptures. These poems will inspire you to write or give up writing altogether. Orders of Service is a masterful, magical debut.”
—Terrance Hayes, So To Speak