Black Poetry Day on October 17th honors past and present black poets.
The day also commemorates the birth of the first published black male poet in the United States. Jupiter Hammon was born in Long Island, New York, on October 17th, 1711. Hammon’s first work, the broadside An Evening Thought (also referred to as “An Evening Prayer” and “An Evening’s Thought: Salvation by Christ, with Penitential Cries”), was published in 1760. Read more HERE.
Philis Wheatley was the first black female poet published in the United States. According to the Poetry Foundation, “Although scholars had generally believed that An Elegiac Poem, on the Death of that Celebrated Divine, and Eminent Servant of Jesus Christ, the Reverend and Learned George Whitefield … (1770) was Wheatley’s first published poem, Carl Bridenbaugh revealed in 1969 that 13-year-old Wheatley—after hearing a miraculous saga of survival at sea—wrote “On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin,” a poem which was published on 21 December 1767 in the Newport, Rhode Island, Mercury.”
For more information on black poets, and to read some incredible poetry, go to Africanamericanpoetry.org, or theroot.com, or poets.org, or curiosityshots.com – or search for the many other sites available.
HERE IS A SHORT LIST OF SOME POETS I ENJOY TO GET YOU STARTED:
- Gwendolyn Brooks
- Rita Dove
- Langston Hughes
- Lucille Clifton
- June Jordan
- Claudia Rankine
- Derek Walcott
- Kate Rushin
- Nikki Giovanni
- Sterling A Brown
- Maya Angelou
- Paul Lawrence Dunbar
- Tracy K Smith
- Claude McKay
- Robert Hayden
- Ntozake Shange
- Sonia Sanchez
- Jerico Brown