Poem About My Rights by June Jordan

One of the most widely-published and highly-acclaimed African American writers of her generation, poet, playwright and essayist June Jordan was known for her fierce commitment to human rights and political activism. Over a career that produced twenty-seven volumes of poems, essays, libretti, and work for children, Jordan engaged the fundamental struggles of her era: for civil rights, women’s rights, and sexual freedom. A prolific writer across genres, Jordan’s poetry is known for its immediacy and accessibility as well as its interest in identity and the representation of personal, lived experience—her poetry is often deeply autobiographical. Jordan’s work also frequently imagines a radical, globalized notion of solidarity amongst the world’s marginalized and oppressed.

Write about the things you construct/restrict regarding your appearance and behaviour so that you can fit into your world.

Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou

During the early 1990s, Angelou wrote several books for children, including Life Doesn’t Frighten Me (1993), which also featured the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat; My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Me (1994), and Kofi and His Magic (1996), both collaborations with the photographer Margaret Courtney-Clark. Angelou’s poetry collections include The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1994) and Phenomenal Woman (1995), a collection of four poems that takes its title from a poem which originally appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1978. The poem’s narrator describes the physical and spiritual characteristics and qualities that make her attractive. Angelou also wrote occasional poems, including A Brave Startling Truth (1995), which commemorated the founding of the United Nations, and Amazing Peace (2005), a poem written for the White House Christmas tree-lighting ceremony.

Write a poem about something you deem phenomenal - a thing, a person, yourself?

You Can Do It by Jabari Asim

An accomplished poet, playwright, and writer, Jabari Asim has been described as one of the most influential African American literary critics of his generation. Asim has served as the editor-in-chief of Crisis magazine—the NAACP’s flagship journal of politics, culture, and ideas— and as an editor at The Washington Post, where he wrote a syndicated column on politics, popular culture, and social issues. His writing has appeared in Essence, The Baffler, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, The New Republic, American Prospect, Yale Review, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Arts and is the author of seven books for adults—including We Can’t Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival —and eleven books for children. His debut book of poems, Stop and Frisk, was published in 2020. His latest books for young readers’, Mighty Justice and My Baby Loves Valentine’s Day, will be released on December 15, 2020. Asim is currently an Elma Lewis Distinguished Fellow and Associate Professor at Emerson College. He is both the Graduate Program Director of the MFA Program in the Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing, and the Program Director for the James Baldwin Writers Colony.

Write a poem about what you want to do in your life.

Old Lem by Sterling A Brown

“Sterling A. Brown was born and raised in the strictly segregated Washington, D.C., of the first decades of the century. His family was middle class (his father was a professor of religion), and he was educated at Williams College and Harvard. There he read the new American poetry of early modernism and was struck especially by the use of the vernacular in Frost, Sandburg, and others. To this he would add knowledge of black folk traditions sought out in the southern countryside during several college teaching jobs in the 1920s. The result was the stunning debut volume, Southern Road (1932), which in many ways revolutionized African American poetry through the rest of the century. The critical issue was Brown's use of black dialect in his poetry. Criticized by James Weldon Johnson and others because of its long association with plantation life and minstrel shows, black dialect was faulted for reinforcing stereotypes, substituting pathos for dignity, and even promoting belief in black ignorance. But Brown's poetry overturned all these assumptions. His revolutionary use of dialect went much further even than crediting the vitality of independent folk traditions. Dialect in Brown becomes an extraordinarily compressed register for an ironic sense of cultural difference, for pride in an alternative knowledge amidst racial oppression. Dialect registers class and race awareness, along with a basic understanding of power relations in America, in a witty form that goes unnoticed by the ruling classes. It is a special form at once of wit and wisdom.

Because Brown's first book of poems appeared at the outset of the Great Depression, it missed the widespread attention it might have attracted but a few years earlier. Brown returned to Harvard for graduate study and produced two groundbreaking critical studies of African American literature in the 1930s. His major anthology, The Negro Caravan, appeared in 1941, but his Collected Poems was not published until 1980.” - From Modern American Poetry

From the Desk of Zoe Washington by Janae Marks

From the Desk of Zoe Washington tells the story of Zoe Washington who recieves a letter on her twelfth birthday from her father who she's never met. Marcus has been in prison all of her life, but, according to him, he has been in prison for a crime he has never committed. Though her mother wants nothing to do with Marcus anymore, Zoe decides to investigate her father's story and case while balancing an internship at a bakery and hoping to earn a spot on the Food Network's Kids Bake Challenge.

Janae Marks' debut middle grade novel helps younger readers explore themes of systemic racism in the modern day justice system and weaves it through a story of hope, family, and fighting for what you believe is right. From the Desk of Zoe Washington has earned numerous accolades including an appearance on the School Library Journal's 2020 Best Books of the Year list.

When was a time that you stood up for something that you thought was unfair?

Epitaph by Gwendolyn Bennet

Bennett attended the prestigious Brooklyn High School for Girls and became the first black member of the school's Literary and Dramatic Societies. Upon her graduation from high school in 1921, she enrolled at Columbia University. She eventually earned her college degree from the Pratt Institute in 1924. After completing college, she was hired as an Assistant Professor of Art at Howard University, but she left in 1925 when she was awarded a $1000 scholarship to study art at the Sorbonne in Paris. Once she returned to the United States, she resumed her position at Howard University and began to emerge as an influential literary figure during the Harlem Renaissance.

Writing prompt: What is an epitaph? Write an epitaph for your own life.

From Far Away by Saoussan Askar

From Far Away is Saoussan Askar’s story of immigrating to Toronto as a child, fleeing civil war in Lebanon. The transition was new and scary, and Saoussan struggled at first with how different everything was. She even wanted to change her name to Susan, but her mother made her change it back. With the assistance of Robert Munsch, her story was first published when she was only in grade 5!

New beginnings – whether they are new classes, new places, or new people – can sometimes feel scary. Write about a time that you were nervous to try something new, but it ended up being great!

Instructions on Not Giving Up by Ada Limón

Lyricly rich poem about Spring. Born March 28, 1976, Ada Limón is originally from Sonoma, California. As a child, she was greatly influenced by the visual arts and artists, including her mother, Stacia Brady. In 2001 she received an MFA from the Creative Writing Program at New York University. Her first collection of poetry, Lucky Wreck (Autumn House Press, 2006), was the winner of the 2005 Autumn House Poetry Prize. She is also the author of The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018); Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; Sharks in the Rivers (Milkweed Editions, 2010); and This Big Fake World (Pearl Editions, 2006), winner of the 2005 Pearl Poetry Prize. Of Limón's work, the poet Richard Blanco writes, "Both soft and tender, enormous and resounding, her poetic gestures entrance and transfix." A 2001-2002 fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and a Guggenheim Fellow, she has also received a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts and won the Chicago Literary Award for Poetry. She splits her time between Lexington, Kentucky, and Sonoma, California.

A Hundred and Fifty Pounds by Michael Prior

While a New Year allows us to celebrate new beginning and the opportunity to carve out a new life, every new beginning is not as filled with hope. "A Hundred and Fifty Pounds", explores the internment of Canadians of Japanese descent during WWII and how they had to create their new life with only 150 pounds from their past.
If you were forced to start over with only 150 pounds from your past, what would you prioritize? What would you bring?

The List of Things That WIll Not Change by Rebecca Stead

The List of Things That Will Not Change is a book that talks about the challenges one can face when their parents are going through a divorce. However, Bea, the main character of the story, keeps a list of things that will stay the same, throughout this new beginning of the next chapter of her life. Although things may seem foreign or scary, she always has those things to keep her grounded.

Albatross By Laura Mucha

Sometimes new beginnings bring a lot of sadness with them. Change is never only good or bad, it can have a bit of both. Poetry can help us speak through metaphor what we can’t say with words. Laura Mucha - in her own words - I’m an ex-lawyer turned award-winning poet, author and children’s advocate. Some of my writing is funny (or at least I hope it is…), but some is serious and addresses important things that aren’t always talked about. I often think about how we live and what we can do to make our lives, and the lives of others, a little bit better. My writing has won multiple international awards and been featured on TV, radio and public transport, as well as in hospitals, hospices, prisons, books, magazines and newspapers around the world, including virtually every newspaper in the UK. My books include Rita’s Rabbit, Dear Ugly Sisters, Being Me, and We Need to Talk About Love / Love Factually (which Richard Curtis describes as ‘much better and more useful than my film’). I’m currently working on several books for children and adults (due to be published by Walker, Nosy Crow, Bloomsbury and Audible). When not writing, I spend my time visiting schools around the world, teaching creative writing and working with organizations such as the such as the National Literacy Trust, Royal Society of Medicine and UNICEF to try to improve the lives of children.

On the Pulse of Morning by Maya Angelou

This small part of the poem On the Pulse of Morning perfectly describes the start of the New Year. The first step is filled with all the promise and hope of what might be and we have the ability to pick a path and chart our destinations. Where do you hope this year will take you? How will you sculpt and shape your experiences?

world shapers by Joanne Arnott

How do you reshape or reimagine your world every day?

Burning the Old Year by Naomi Shihab Nye

“Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father was a Palestinian refugee and her mother an American of German and Swiss descent, and Nye spent her adolescence in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. She earned her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio. Nye is the recipient of numerous honors and awards for her work, including the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement from the National Book Critics Circle, the Lavan Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Carity Randall Prize, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry award, the Robert Creeley Prize, and many Pushcart Prizes. She has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and she was a Witter Bynner Fellow. From 2010 to 2015 she served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2018 she was awarded the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters. Nye is the Poetry Foundation's Young People's Poet Laureate.” - From Poetry Foundation

New Year’s Day By Kim Addonizio

“Kim Addonizio was born in Washington DC, the daughter of a former tennis champion and a sports writer. She attended college in San Francisco, earning both her BA and MA from San Francisco State University, and has spent much of her adult life in the Bay Area. She currently lives in San Francisco.

Addonizio has received numerous awards for her work, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, and the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award. Addonizio’s poetry is known for its gritty, street-wise narrators and wicked sense of wit. Her early volumes of poetry, including The Philosopher’s Club (1994) and the verse novel Jimmy & Rita (1997), unflinchingly treated subjects ranging from mortality to love to substance abuse. Daniela Gioseffi, writing in the American Book Review, affirmed that Addonizio “is wise and crafty in her observations and her portrayal of sensual love, filial feeling, death or loss.” Gioseffi contended that Addonizio “is most profound when she’s philosophizing about the transient quality of life and its central realization of mortality.” - from Poetry Foundation

I Wonder by Margarita Engle

The poem, I Wonder, helps us imagine how tiny animals and plants can grow into enormous creatures or vast forests. Sometimes the smallest beings grow into the most magnificent and mighty!

Margarita Engle is the author of numerous novels, memoirs and picture books. Born in Los Angeles, much of her poetry is influenced by her mother’s Cuban heritage.

Imagine you plant a tree at your home today. What will the tree look like in 50 years? What do you think your house, neighbourhood, and city will be 50 years in the future?

New Beginnings by Gertrude B. McClain

Gertrude B. McClain was a 71 year old poet from Waycross. In this poem she writes about the difficulty's and rewards of starting a new chapter in your life, and the importance of acting now instead of waiting because the longer you wait the less experiences you will have. Sometimes the best things that can happen to us will hurt, but you need to look past the pain to find the hidden rewards because the best things in life are earned not given.

New Years Day by Kim Addonizio

Kim Addonizio is a New York poet who has received many awards for her work. In this poem, she is reflecting on her life and looking into other peoples lives while being sad on new years day.

The Day I Decided to Become Sunshine by Vanessa Brantley-Newton

Vanessa Brantley-Newton is an author, illustrator and poet who lives in North Carolina. Her website shares that she "wants all children to see their unique experiences reflected in the books they read, so they can feel the same sense of empowerment and recognition she experienced as a young reader." In The Day I Decided to Become Sunshine, the speaker decides to make the most out of her new day and be a light in her community.

How can you start this new year off as a positive light in YOUR community?