black poets
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'We Write to Tell the Truth': The Root Presents: It's Lit! Talks the Poetic Justice of 2020 With Nikki Giovanni
Of all the adjectives we’d use to describe 2020, “good” wouldn’t exactly top the list. But as this most eventful year comes to a close, hosting literary icon and activist Nikki Giovanni on our new podcast, The Root Presents: It’s Lit! will undoubtedly be one of its high points. Ironically, to hear the legendary poet…
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The Home of Celebrated Poet Lucille Clifton Will Become a Creative Haven in Baltimore
The opening lines of one of Lucille Clifton’s best-known poems read: “Won’t you celebrate with me, what I have shaped into a kind of life? I had no model.” In life, Clifton was a prolific poet and children’s book author who, after being brought to national attention by the likes of Langston Hughes and Ishmael…
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Just Us: These Black Poets Use the Power of Their Words to Highlight Injustice
Editor’s note: This week, for National Poetry Month, we’re featuring 37 up-and-coming black poets—including one today who is much more well-known but in a different field—who we expect do amazing work over the next decade. We grouped them by categories, though their works often blur boundaries and defy definitions. Monday’s theme was Black Regionalism, poets…
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More Than Words: These Poets Aren't Afraid to Mix It Up With Music, Visual Arts to Tell Black Stories
Editor’s note: This week, for National Poetry Month, we’re featuring 37 up-and-coming black poets—including one today who is much more well-known but in a different field—who we expect do amazing work over the next decade. We grouped them by categories, though their works often blur boundaries and defy definitions. Monday’s theme was Black Regionalism, poets…
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These Poets Are Dedicated to Elevating and Preserving the Artform
Editor’s note: This week, for National Poetry Month, we’re featuring 37 up-and-coming black poets who we expect do amazing work over the next decade. We grouped them by categories, though their works often blur boundaries and defy definitions. Monday’s theme was Black Regionalism, poets who look at black life and society through the prism of geographic…
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These Queer Poets Expand on Black Life Through Their Work
Editor’s note: For National Poetry Month, we’re featuring 37 up-and-coming black poets this week who we expect to do amazing work over the next decade. We grouped them by categories, though their works often blur boundaries and defy definitions. Monday’s theme was Black Regionalism, poets who look at black life and society through the prism…
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Langston’s Legacy: These Young Black Poets Rep Their Cultures to the Fullest
While in his early 20s and a student at Lincoln University, Langston Hughes published his first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, and penned his landmark essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” In it, he implored young black writers to express their “individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame.” For National Poetry Month,…
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In Memoriam: For Colored Girls Who Grew Up on Ntozake Shange
If you were a colored girl lucky enough (or “enuf,” as she might write) to grow up on the words and work of playwright, performer and author Ntozake Shange, learning of her death at age 70 on Saturday no doubt left you aching. One of the original conjurers of what we now know as “black…
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Today Is National Black Poetry Day. Here’s a Totally Biased List of 10 Black Poems You Should Hear
Today is national black poetry day and I am, among many things, a black poet. I could link to Maya Angelou’s “Phenomenal Woman” or some other literary poets, but there are these things called books that you should totally check out. And because The Root’s Social Media Editor Corey Townsend hates spoken word poetry, I…