Black Poets
A list of poetry by Black poets recommended by staff at The Seattle Public Library.
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Travesty Generator
Like a ghost in the machine, Travesty Generator remixes programming codes and turns them to ruminate on the intersections of race and gender. -- publisher's copy
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Tradition
The searing third collection from Brown (The New Testament) begins with the luminous "Ganymede," in which Heaven is described as "that far terrain/ between Promise and Apology." -- Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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1919
Ewing draws on a government report to illuminate the context and impact of Chicago's 1919 race riot in clarion and haunting poems. -- Booklist
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Hoodwitch
Through a series of poems based on childhood photographs, Hicks invokes the spirits of mothers and daughters, sex workers and widows–to conjure an alternative to their own early deaths and the deaths of those whom they have already lost. -- publisher's copy
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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Slingshot
The poems present themselves as homemade weapons (like slingshots) against malign parents, authority figures, structural racism and fears of the other. -- New York Times Book Review
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman
One of few African American poets in the Beat Generation, Kaufman (1925--86) lived a full, if fragmented, creative life despite enduring poverty, racism, police brutality, and mental instability. This new compilation includes the three collections he published, plus 30 never-seen works. -- Library Journal
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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HULL
In this debut collection by African American poet Xandria Phillips, HULL explores emotional impacts of colonialism and racism on the Black queer body and the present-day emotional impacts of enslavement in urban, rural, and international settings. -- publisher's copy
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Stepwell
Azura Mizan Tyabji serves as the 2018/19 Youth Poet Laureate of Seattle. As a writer, spoken word performer, facilitator, and educator, her poetry is motivated by a love for community, justice, and healing. -- publisher's copy
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Monument
Two-term U.S. Poet Laureate Trethewey (Thrall) culls some of the finest work from her illustrious two-decade career and presents formally diverse new poems exploring her customary themes. -- Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart
In her introduction to this newest volume of poems, Walker cites the "arrows of sorrow, of anger, of despair" that pierce the heart during troubled times, carrying out these concerns in the poems themselves, whether addressing harm done to animals, children, or the earth. -- Library Journal
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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