Black Poets You Need to Read!Like this list

20 items

• Anywho, I Love You

  Holmes, Samantha King,

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  This is a seven-year tapestry of love, adventure, enlightenment, and progression. A collection of moments sewn together with poetry and prose, memories and musings. -Andrews McMeel Publishing

• Girls That Never Die

  Poems

  Elhillo, Safia,

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  In "Girls That Never Die," award-winning poet Safia Elhillo reinvents the epic to explore Muslim girlhood and shame, the dangers of being a woman, and the myriad of violence enacted and imagined against women’s bodies. Drawing from her own life and…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Hill We Climb

  An Inaugural Poem for the Country

  Gorman, Amanda, 1998-

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  On January 20, 2021, Amanda Gorman became the sixth and youngest poet to deliver a poetry reading at a presidential inauguration. Taking the stage after the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden, Gorman captivated the nation and brought…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Black Girl, Call Home

  Mans, Jasmine,

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  From spoken word poet, Jasmine Mans comes an unforgettable poetry collection about race, feminism, and queer identity. With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself—and us—home. Each poem explores what it means to be…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• I Am the Rage

  McGowan, Martina,

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  "I am the Rage" is not just a poetry book. It is a call to action. This evocative collection of thirty poems puts readers in the position of feeling, reflecting, and empathizing with what it means to be Black in America today. Dr. Martina McGowan, a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• How Far You Have Come

  Musings on Beauty and Courage

  Nichols, Morgan Harper, 1990-

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  "How Far You Have Come" is an exquisitely illustrated collection of poetry and essays from bestselling artist and writer Morgan Harper Nichols. In the midst of the hurt and the mundane, the questions and the not yets, you can forget just how far you…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Flowers on the Moon / Billy Chapata

  Chapata, Billy,

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  Author Billy Chapata comes to his second major poetry collection, "Flowers on the Moon." Chapata presents his signature blend of experience and advice through a chaptered series of prose and poetry. Filled with the familiar themes of love, loss,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Lorde, Audre,

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  Self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet" Audre Lorde is an unforgettable voice in twentieth-century literature, and one of the first to center the experiences of black, queer women. This essential reader showcases her indelible…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing

  the Incarceration of African American Women From Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland

  Hill, DaMaris B.,

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  From Harriet Tubman to Assata Shakur, Ida B. Wells to Sandra Bland and Black Lives Matter, black women freedom fighters have braved violence, scorn, despair, and isolation in order to lodge their protests. "In A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing,"…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• African American Poetry

  250 Years of Struggle & Song

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  Across a turbulent history, from such vital centers as Harlem, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and the Bay Area, Black poets created a rich and multifaceted tradition that has been both a reckoning with American realities and an imaginative…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Ain't Never Not Been Black

  Johnson, Javon,

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  Engaging with themes of masculinity, racism, love, and joy, Johnson is at once critical and creative. His spoken word performance transfers effortlessly to the page, with poems that will encompass you. This is a book about blackness and survival,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Tradition

  Brown, Jericho,

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  Jericho Brown’s daring new book "The Tradition" details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown’s poetic concerns are both broad and intimate and at their very core a distillation of the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• She Felt Like Feeling Nothing

  Sin, R. H.,

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  There are moments when the heart no longer wishes to feel because everything it's felt up until then has brought it nothing but anguish. In "She Felt Like Feeling Nothing," r.h. Sin pursues themes of self-discovery and retrospection. With this book,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

  Hayes, Terrance,

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  In seventy poems bearing the same title, Terrance Hayes explores the meanings of American, of the assassin, and of love in the sonnet form. Written during the first two hundred days of the Trump presidency, these poems are haunted by the country's…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• A Good Cry

  What We Learn From Tears and Laughter

  Giovanni, Nikki,

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  One of America’s most celebrated poets looks inward in this powerful collection, a rumination on her life and the people who have shaped her.-HarperColllins Publisher

• Counting Descent

  Smith, Clint,

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  Smith explores the cognitive dissonance that results from belonging to a community that unapologetically celebrates black humanity while living in a world that often renders blackness a caricature of fear. His poems move fluidly across personal and…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Maya Angelou

  the Complete Poetry

  Angelou, Maya,

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  Throughout her illustrious career in letters, Maya Angelou gifted, healed and inspired the world with her words. Now the beauty and spirit of those words live on in this new and complete collection of poetry that reflects and honors the writer’s…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude

  Gay, Ross, 1974-

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  "Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude" is a sustained meditation on that which goes away—loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it—that tries to find solace in the processes of the garden and the orchard. That is, this is a book that studies the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Citizen

  An American Lyric

  Rankine, Claudia, 1963-

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  Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf

  a Choreopoem

  Shange, Ntozake

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  In celebration of its highly anticipated Broadway revival, Ntozake Shange’s classic, award-winning play centering the wide-ranging experiences of Black women, now with introductions by two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward and Broadway…Read moreRead more of this annotation