19 Black Female Poets, Best Upcomers & Established Wordsmiths
When I think of Black female poets, I call back of Maya Angelou.
I think of Audre Lorde.
I recollect of Toni Morrison.
While these women were some of the greats, regardless of their gender or race, they are joined by a ton of other great women.
The verse earth might seem small-scale, merely it'southward non as small every bit you think.
There are tons of amazing Black female poets from the by and nowadays, and we're here to share them with you today.
From the classics to newer poets like Jamilla Wood and Mahogany L. Browne, here are 21 amazing Blackness female poets to expect into.
Phillis Wheatley
One tin can't talk nigh verse without talking about Phillis Wheatley and her contributions.
She was the first African-American author of a published book of poetry.
Born in the 1750s, you lot can imagine what her history looked like.
Wheatley was built-in in Westward Africa before she was sold into slavery as a immature kid.
She was purchased by the Wheatley family of Boston who not only taught her to read and write, simply they encouraged her poesy equally well.
It was her master'south son who sought to get her work published and her commencement piece of work, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was published in London in 1773.
Before her death, she was emancipated from the Wheatleys, simply her onetime owner'southward death left her in poverty.
She died in 1784 at the immature historic period of 31.
Maya Angelou
If yous think "Black female poet," the first name for many volition be Maya Angelou.
Singularly, she did so much for poetry as a whole.
Born in Missouri, Angelou moved around before resettling back in St. Louis.
Early childhood trauma left her mute for five years, just every bit nosotros know, she eventually blossomed into a celebrated wordsmith.
Angelou has an endless number of celebrated works including the novem I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Her collection of great works include I Shall Not Exist Moved, Phenomenal Women, and And Notwithstanding I Rise.
Jessie Redmon Fauset
Jessie Redmon Fauset came from humble beginnings.
The poet was one of seven children before the passing of her mother and the remarrying of her father.
Both of her parents died immature, and while she experienced poverty growing up, she attended a prestigious high school in Philadelphia.
Graduating equally their valedictorian, she had dreams of studying at Bryn Mawr College.
Considering of the racial injustice at the time, they did non accept her and instead found her a scholarship to some other university – Cornell.
Later on gaining a degree in classical languages, she became a teacher and so a literary editor.
Her work as an editor helped foster many names of the Harlem Renaissance, especially Langston Hughes.
Some works to look into are Rondeau and La Vie C'est La Vie.
Gwendolyn Brooks, Another Black Female person Poet
Gwendolyn Brooks is some other prolific name in poetry.
Born in1917 in Kansas, her family moved to Chicago when she was only six weeks old.
Brooks began writing at an early age and even began submitting her piece of work to publications every bit a teenager.
By the time she graduated high school, she was a regular contributor to The Chicago Defender.
Her career would proceed to abound from at that place.
In May 1950, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, making her the kickoff African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize.
Gwendolyn Brooks, without a doubt, helped open doors for other Black poets, male and female.
Nikki Giovanni
Nikki Giovanni's journey begins in Tennessee, earlier it would lead her to numerous states.
She finally landed back in Tennessee when she began attention Fisk University equally an early on aspirant.
After clashing with the Dean of Women, Giovanni was kicked out of the academy before she was later asked to return.
Before long later on her graduation in 1967, she experienced the loss of her grandmother which led to her turning to writing to cope.
These poems can be found in her collection Black Feelings, Blackness Talk.
She would also play a major part in the Blackness Arts Movement which led to her being recognized and celebrated with an NAACP Epitome Laurels likewise as a Grammy Award nomination for her poetry album The Nikki Giovanni Verse Collection.
Elizabeth Alexander
Elizabeth Alexander was born in New York Metropolis and raised in Washington, D.C.
At merely one years erstwhile, the future poet witnessed MLK's I Take A Dream speech.
Alexander'south youth continued with early education at Sidwell Friends Schoolhouse before she attended Yale Academy.
Later, she would attend Boston University where she studied verse and gained her Master's in 1987.
She would further her teaching with a PhD in English from UPenn.
She published her first poems in 1990 and has connected to periodically release poems since then.
She taught verse at Yale University and chaired the African American Studies department.
She is currently faculty at Columbia Academy and president of the Andrew W. Mellon foundation.
Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton was built-in in Depew, New York, before her teaching took her to Howard University and ultimately back to the Buffalo-surface area where she connected her studies at the State University of New York at Fredonia.
She worked as a claims clerk and literature banana before she was introduced to community theater.
Clifton'southward poesy career began in 1969 when she published her first collection, Good Times, which was listed by The New York Times equally 1 of the yr'due south all-time books.
She has since served as poet-in-residence and Poet Laureates for a number of colleges and universities.
The poet has received an Emmy Award and was nominated for the prestigious Pulitzer Prize.
Staceyann Chin
Staceyann Chin, built-in in Jamaica, now lives in New York City.
Her career truly began in 1998, and she is recognized as both an "out poet" and political activist.
Demonstrating her writing chops, she co-wrote and performed in Russell Simmons' Tony-nominated Def Verse Jam while it was on Broadway.
She has numerous chapbooks and anthologies that demonstrate her work.
In addition to her poetry, she has hosted Logo'southward Afterwards Ellen and co-hosted Centric's My Two Cents.
She's also had her piece of work published in The New York Post and The Washington Post.
Rita Dove, An African American Woman Poet
Born in Akron, Ohio, Rita Dove excelled in teaching early on in her life.
She graduated from Buchtel High School as a Presidential Scholar and would later become her Bachelor's Degree from Miami Academy and her Master'due south degree from the University of Iowa.
Her career is quite an amazing 1.
She served every bit Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.
She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poesy in 1987, making her the 2d African American to practise so.
To read some of her amazing poetry, cheque her collections like Sonata Mulattica, American Smooth, and Mother Beloved.
Cheryl Clarke
Cheryl Clarke was built-in and raised in Washington, D.C.
Clarke's education would notice her attention Howard University where she received a B.A. in English literature.
She would then earn her Primary's caste from Rutgers University.
She would continue her didactics at Rutgers and gain a Principal's in Social Work in 1980 and a Ph.D in 2000.
Clarke has 4 collections of poetry, many of them explain her experiences as both a Blackness woman and a lesbian.
Two of her most notable poems include Lesbianism: an Human activity of Resistance and The Failure to Transform: Homophobia in the Black Community.
Mahogany L. Browne
Mahogany L. Browne is a poet who currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Not just is the the Executive Managing director of Bowery Poetry Club, only she's also the Artistic Director of Urban Give-and-take NYC and Poetry Coordinator at St. Francis College.
The poet has received several fellowships and is the author of quite a few works.
Oft writing on how society and social injustice affects women and children, some of her works are Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice, Woke Babe, and Kissing Caskets.
Jamilla Forest
Built-in in Chicago, Jamilla Woods is non merely a poet, merely she'due south also a vocalist-songwriter.
Forest is a graduate of Dark-brown University, where she received a Bachelor's caste in Africana Studies and Theater & Operation Studies.
She released her first chapbook in 2012 entitled The Truth About Dolls.
When asked about her influences, she includes many of the names on this list like Lucille Clifton, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Toni Morrison.
Woods is also known equally a customs organizer and a singer.
She has worked with Hazard the Rapper and has appeared on the Macklemore & Ryan Lewis vocal "White Privilege 2."
Aja Monet
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Ava Monet is of Cuban-Jamaican descent.
In 2007, she was the youngest poet to become the Nuyorican Poet Cafe M Slam Champion at the age of 19, and she has been the final adult female to win since then.
She participated in the 2022 anthology New Daughters of Africa, where information technology features poems about the role of honey and intimacy in freedom fighting.
Some of her poetry that you can wait into are My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter, The Black Unicorn Sings, and Chorus.
Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde is another poet on this list whose career precedes her.
Lorde described herself every bit "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet."
The kid of Caribbean area immigrants, she grew up in New York Metropolis.
Nearsighted to the point of being legally bullheaded, Lorde taught herself to read and talk at the age of four.
Her mother also taught her to write around the aforementioned fourth dimension.
Lorde wrote her offset poem when she was in eighth grade and the residuum would be her story.
She used her words to confront and address racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia.
A hero for Black people and the LGBTQ+ community, she has received numerous accolades for her work.
Her poetry can exist found in books like The First Cities, Cables to Rage, and Betwixt Our Selves.
Sonia Sanchez
Built-in in Birmingham Alabama, Sonia Sanchez was a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement.
Subsequently studying at Hunter College and NYU, she would become on to become a teacher and activist.
Naming influences like Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown, 1 can experience her poems in anthologies similar 360 Degrees of Black Coming at Yous!
Claudia Rankine
Another Jamaican-built-in poet on this listing, Rankine would go on to be educated at Williams College in Massachusetts and Columbia University.
Rankine is extremely decorated and has had her poems published in many journals.
Her most popular piece of work is her book of poesy, Denizen: An American Lyric.
It won both the 2014 Los Angeles Times Volume Award and the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry.
Rankine is also the winner of the 2022 NAACP Image Award in verse.
Lastly, her book Citizen is the only poesy book to be a New York Times bestseller in the nonfiction category.
Alice Walker
While yous might recognize the proper name Alice Walker for her novel, The Color Purple, the writer is besides a celebrated poet too.
Born in Georgia, Walker would attend Spelman College before earning her degree from Sarah Lawrence.
Her career began with her writing poesy and led to her releasing the popular novel The Color Purple in 1982.
The book would earn her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1982 also as the National Book Award the year after.
If you'd like to see her poetry, yous can observe them in collections: Once, Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the World, and Taking the Arrow Out of the Eye.
Ntozake Shange, A Black Girl Who Does Poetry
Another woman who is known for her work outside poesy, you probably recognize Ntozake Shange's name from the play For Colored Girls Who Take Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf.
Shange was built-in in New Bailiwick of jersey to an upper-centre form family.
Taking an early interest in poetry, Shange would attend poetry readings with her younger sis.
She would attend Barnard College at Columbia University where she got her B.A. and would earn her Master'southward from USC.
Having received numerous awards including nominations for an Emmy Award, Tony Accolade, and Grammy Award, she is one of the most recognized Black female poets.
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is another dandy proper name in poesy.
Born in Ohio, Morrison'southward education would take her to Howard University where she got her Bachelor'south in English and Cornell University where she earned her Master'south in American Literature.
Her prolific career includes her becoming the showtime blackness female editor at Random House in the belatedly 1960s.
A decade later on, Morrison would focus on her writing.
One of her nearly celebrated works is her novel Beloved, which was fabricated into a pic starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover.
Her works also include The Bluest Middle, Sula, Vocal of Soloman, and Tar Baby.
She also received the 2012 Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.
Afterwards her death in 2019, she was posthumously inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
Top Black Female Poets Conclusion
Black women proceed to push button the envelope in every single industry.
They're pushing themselves to the forefront of every imaginable field.
You can't talk nearly poetry without naming women on this listing.
Yous can't talk about opera without the voices on our Black opera singers listing.
Yous tin't discuss music without the best R&B albums of all fourth dimension.
Blackness women and men have propelled themselves to smashing heights, and it's exciting to see what's in store.
Source: https://www.thatsister.com/black-female-poets/
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