Twitter's Favourite Poems by Black Poets: Part 1
Yesterday, on Twitter, @lutherxhughes tweeted prompting people to share their favourite poem by a black poet:
I spent ages scrolling through the list and reading familiar and unfamiliar poems, before I realised this is a list much needed by English teachers. With his kind permission, I am sharing the collated list of poets and poems below. I imagine that if you, like me, need to broaden your knowledge of poetry from the more 'classical' canon, this will be a great place to start, and will have a wealth of suggestions for unseen poetry teaching.
- John Agard - ‘Half-Caste’
- Benjamin Zephaniah - ‘talking turkeys’, ‘The Race Industry’, ‘No Rights Red an Half Dead’
- Maya Angelou - ‘Still I Rise’, ‘Phenomenal Woman’, ‘Is Love’
- Linton Kwesi Johnson - ‘Sonny’s Lettah'
- Derek Walcott - ‘Love After Love’, ‘The Sea is History’, ‘Parang’
- Countee Cullen - ‘Heritage’
- Rudy Francisco - ‘Sip’
- Warsan Shire - ‘For women who are ‘difficult’ to love’
- Dominique Christina - ‘We Women of Long Memories’, ‘Karma’
- Nicole Sealey - ‘medical history’, ‘it’s not fitness, it’s a lifestyle’
- Nate Marshall - ‘picking flowers’, ‘god made the hundreds, man made it wild’
- Countee Cullen - ‘Incident’
- Christopher Gilbert - ‘Fetish’
- Gil Scott-Heron - ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’
- Jay Bernard - ‘Losers’
- Alexis Pauline Gumbs - ‘a spell to save your life (after Toni Cade Bambara)’
- Alice Walker - ‘The feminine is not dead’
- Marilyn Nelson - ‘Green-Thumb Boy’
- Elizabeth Alexander - ‘Narrative: Ali’
- Khalypso The Poet - ‘The Floor Is Respecting Black Women’
- Kei Miller - ‘The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion’
- Staceyann Chin - ‘Take Back The Night’
- Lauren Saxon - ‘Ghost Boys’
- Tiana Clark - ‘The Rime of Nina Simone’
- Angel Nafis - ‘Ghazal for Becoming Your Own Country’
- Wanda Coleman - ‘Wanda, Why Aren’t You Dead?’
- June Jordan - ‘Relativity’
- Warsan Shire - ‘In Love and In War’
- Chinua Achebe - ‘Vultures’
- Toi Dericotte - ‘For my unnamed brother (1943-1943)’
- Keith S Wilson - ‘Black Matters’
- Safia Elhillo - ‘Self Portrait with No Flag’
- Neiel Israel - ‘When a Black Man Walks’
- Darius Daughtry
- Rickey Laurentiis - ‘2019’
- Fred Moten - ‘i ran from it and was still in it’
- Aracellis Giray - ‘The Black Maria’
- Lyrae van Cleif-Stefanon - ‘RR Lyrae: Matter’
- Roger Reeves - ‘Children Listen’
- Gary Jackson - ‘Magneto Eyes Strange Fruit’
- Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson - ‘I Sit and Sew’
- Frank X Walker - Affrilachia
- Douglas Manuel - ‘I can run five miles but can’t get to the other side of my mind’
- Natasha Tretheway - ‘Imperatives for Carrying On in the Aftermath’
- Saaed Jones - ‘Isaac, After Mount Moriah’
- Camonghne Felix
- Kamau Brathwaite - ‘Wings of a Dove’
- Miss Louise Bennett - ‘Colonization in Reverse’, ‘Dry-Foot Bwoy’