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Here’s to Black Poetry Day, a day put in place to honor the legacy and literacy of Black poets of past and present. To commemorate, we’re nodding at some of this generation’s most eloquent wordsmiths. From Morgan Parker to National Book Award finalist Danez Smith, here’s a list of 10 powerful poets that’ll stir your soul.
Aaron Samuels
What To Check:
What Folks Are Saying:
“Yarmulkes & Fitted Caps is brilliant and heart-breaking. Samuels fearlessly takes on the complexities of multiracial heritage and identity with charged visions of coming-of-age and family histories that will haunt you. This collection establishes Samuels as a poet of extraordinary ambition, talent and vision.” — Heidi W. Durrow, New York Times Best-Selling Author of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky
https://www.instagram.com/p/BaPaSrpnY2c/
Alexandra Elle
What To Check:
Neon Soul: A Collection of Poetry and Prose
What Folks Are Saying:
“Alexandra Elle writes frankly about her experience as a young, single mother while she celebrates her triumph over adversity and promotes resilience and self-care in her readers. This book of all-new poems from the beloved author of Words From A Wanderer and Love In My Language is a quotable companion on the road to healing.” — Andrews McMeel Publishing
https://www.instagram.com/p/BXMHwCMha31/
Aja Monet
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What Folks Are Saying:
“There are people who come into your life, who come into this world with such velocity, bravery and beauty that whole hearts are changed, the whole earth is moved. Aja Monet is one of those rare people in my world, in this world. She is a lyrical shape-shifter, an ancient infant, bravely falling up. Her search for compassion and truth is relentless and voracious. Her time here, her work, here, her life is our poem. Here.” — Michaela Angela Davis
Danez Smith
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What Folks Are Saying:
“[Smith’s] poems are enriched to the point of volatility, but they pay out, often, in sudden joy.” ― The New Yorker
Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib
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What Folks Are Saying:
“Willis-Abdurraqib possesses a striking gift for merging pop culture with personal narrative.” ― Publishers Weekly
Khadijah Queen
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What Folks Are Saying:
“Queen looks closely at moments of contact among violence, beauty, and seduction without glorifying them. It is through such a nuanced and courageous lyric inquiry that fear becomes the entity against which Queen can “sharpen the leaden blade of her voice.” ― Publishers Weekly
https://www.instagram.com/p/BaDA6JFgz0V/
Mahogany L. Browne
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What Folks Are Saying:
“Browne continues her tradition of creating rich, unflinching, and unapologetic work cataloguing the world as she sees it, and SMUDGE sees her at the top of her game.” — Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, NEA Poetry Fellow & author of The Year of No Mistakes
Morgan Parker
What To Check:
There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé
What Folks Are Saying:
“Morgan Parker”s bombastic second book profoundly expresses a black millennial consciousness with anger and appetite. Everywhere Parker looks, she sees a wildly messed-up world ― ‘There’s far too many of me dying’; ‘The President be like/ we lost a young boy today.’ She also answers a personal and public mandate to re-envision it through humor and confrontation.” — NPR.org
https://www.instagram.com/p/BWvk8Uigchz/
Phillip B. Williams
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What Folks Are Saying:
“This gorgeous debut is a ‘debut’ in chronology only. . . . Need is everywhere—in the unforgiving images, in lines so delicate they seem to break apart in the hands, and in the reader who will enter these poems and never want to leave.” — Adrian Matejka, poet and Guggenheim Foundation fellowship recipient
https://www.instagram.com/p/BZuqgDclPX4/
Yrsa Daley-Ward
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What Folks Are Saying:
“Yrsa’s work is like holding the truth in your hands. It sweats and breathes before you. A glorious living thing.” — Florence Welch, of Florence + the Machine
