Literary history is full of promised futures that were never realised. Only a few years ago, it seemed like we were heading towards a more nuanced era of genre definition, with the complexity of intersectional lives at the fore of publishing. While promising to become a genre, it has remained – for most publishers – only a lens. From Black queer poetry to disabled, working-class poets, there’s never been a more urgent moment for publishers to expand the identity parade of their lists.

The theory of intersectionality was invented by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, as a way of interrogating interlocking systems of power. Writers intuitively knew of this long before, with James Baldwin writing that "anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor". Taken on its own, this might seem like statement on poverty in isolation, but in Baldwin’s experience the reality is of a poor Black gay man, living a marginalised life under various forms of oppression. Poets have been at the fore of expressing what nuanced intersectionality feels like, from Audre Lorde to bell hooks, both writers who explode the limiting binary of either/or thinking – itself a by-product of power structures in the world.

There’s no more important area for publishers to lean into with their intersectional lists than YA – it’s essential for young people to see themselves represented in the books they find in shops and libraries. One of the big successes in this area in recent years is the verse novel The Poet X by award-winning slam poet, Elizabeth Acevedo. The book tells the story of an Afro-Latina heroine Xiomara, on her journey towards sharing the hidden fire of her life: poetry. With 136,000 ratings on goodreads.com the success of this hybrid work speaks for itself.

There’s also Embodied: An Intersectional Feminist Comics Anthology, edited by Wendy and Tyler Chin-Tanner. These poetry comics involve up to four collaborators in the one work: poet, artist, letterer and colourist. This got me thinking that perhaps our most radical writers – those who explode genres – do so because they live explosive, intersectional lives.

Take the incredible Dambudzo Marechera for example, whose book Mindblast is a mix of poems, fiction and drama. But then his life was all drama, arriving at the University of Oxford as a poor black African, to experience the weight of centuries-long social hierarchies. In one incident, he turned up for a literary soirée wearing a complete riding outfit with jodhpurs, black jacket, boots and a bowler hat – a subversion of the establishment he could never belong to. "When all else fails," Marechera wrote before his death at 35, "don’t take it in silence".

There’s no more important area for publishers to lean into with their intersectional lists than YA – it’s essential for young people to see themselves represented in the books they find in shops and libraries.

Isabel Waidner has explored this link between literary form and power when in 2018 she edited Liberating the Canon: An Anthology of Innovative Literature. "My ambition," Waidner writes, "was to anthologise writers whose works re-imagine and extend what literary innovation might mean if marginalised writers were leading the conversation". Those writers include Jay Bernard, an interdisciplinary poet and artist from London whose work is rooted in social histories. Bernard’s work often segues into song, as well as pushing the genre of poetry film.

Also included in the anthology is Nisha Ramayya, a poet who with Indian heritage who grew up in Glasgow and who says: "I love to think about poetry in an ever-expanding sense." Waidner’s approach to Liberating the Canon should be offered wholesale to publishers looking to invigorate their lists; "the writing needs to work across various systems of oppression (intersectionality), across formal distinction (prose and poetry, critical and creative, and the various genres), and across disciplines… Liberating the canon depends on inclusion and formal innovation in equal measures. The two are related."

As one reviewer of the anthology wrote, "if this book can exist, anything is possible". That’s the sweet spot publishers should be looking for.

There is joy and excitement in so much intersectional literature as lived experience is claimed as new territory for writing, and then celebrated by readers and audiences. On 9th July, the National Poetry Library will host a "Spicy Crip Takeover" of the library, where "queer, disabled and sexy AF poets take over... for a thrilling showcase of work from eff-able, a spicy anthology of queer crip poetry".

Hosted by poets George Parker and JP Seabright, this is a body-positive project, spotlighting queer, disabled writers who write about sex and desire. This event has only recently gone on sale, but we’re already hearing a resounding "Yes" from the queer, disabled audience, with one person feeding back that "we never see work programmed for us". So much more is needed in this space.

Poetry might be uniquely placed to lead the way with intersectional literature – as it so often deals with "writing between the lines", as Rachel Blau DuPlessis puts it – but the story shouldn’t end there. It’s time for more intersectional fiction and non-fiction to get out there, showing us the full breadth of human experience. Come on publishers, liberate your canons.