It’s often called the voice of the human soul. It was a means of rebellion for Phyllis Wheatley, Langston Hughes, and Nikki Giovanni. And it’s the bedrock of rap music, often called “the CNN of the street.”
Poetry, the art form in question, is embedded in the Black experience, a form of resistance and truth as well as beauty and resilience. Yet people often see poetry as inaccessible — reserved for eggheads, elites and reluctant K-12 English students.
According to a 2022 survey, around 12% of all U.S. adults read or listened to poetry, compared with roughly 8% of Black people. That rate, however, was down from 2017, when the same survey found 15% of Black Americans read poetry — the highest percentage of any racial group.
We at Word In Black are doing our part to change that. Because April is National Poetry Month, we’ve compiled a list of five Black contemporary poets that all students and adults should know about.
Amanda Gorman
The youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history, Gorman is perhaps best known for her poem “The Hill We Climb,” a centerpiece of President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2020.
Gorman’s work often explores themes of race, feminism, marginalization, and climate change. In her poem “The Hill We Climb”, she writes:
We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.
And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge our union with purpose.
RELATED: Racial Healing Finds New Voice in Community Poets
Hanif Abdurraqib
Abdurraqib is an American poet, essayist and cultural critic. His writing centers on growing up in the ‘hood in Columbus, Ohio: concerts, barbershop wisdom, and the life lessons he’s learned along the way. Publisher’s Weekly writes that Abdurraqib “uses pop culture and persona as entryways to explore themes such as family, friendship, race, love, and police brutality” while bringing “inexhaustible energy and urgency” to his craft.
His first book of poems, “The Crown Ain’t Worth Much,” was published in 2016. In one poem, “I do not call this ‘War,’” Abdurraqib writes:
“I do not stand in the doorway and kiss my wife like I will never see her again.
I do not say noose when I mean bullet.
I do not say bullet when asked what keeps me awake at night.
I do not keep track of the names.I do not keep track of my own body.
I do not look at graves.”
Danez Smith
Known for works that touch on the intersection of Blackness and queerness, youth and racial justice, Smith’s books include “[insert] Boy,” “Home/My Nig,” “Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems,” and “Bluff,” which was nominated for a NAACP Image Award and was a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize.
In his poem, “old Confession & new,” Smith writes:
it sounds crazy, but it feels like truth. i tell you –
it felt like i practiced for it, auditioned even, applied.
what the doctor told me was not news, was legend
catching up to me, a blood whispering
you were born for this.”
RELATED: 7 Black Poets Every Student Should Read
Patricia Smith
A journalist-turned-poet, Smith’s collections include “Incendiary Art,” “Blood Dazzler” and most recently “The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems,” which won the 2025 National Book Award for Poetry.
Smith’s work often touches on race, families, and historical moments.
In his poem, “The Sun, Mad Envious, Just Wants the Moon,” Smith writes:
out of the way. It knows that I tend to cling
to potential in the dark, that I am myself only
as I am beguiled by the moon’s lunatic luster,
when the streets are so bare they grow voices.”
Jasmine Mans
Author of “BLACK GIRL, CALL HOME,” which has won numerous awards, Mans’s work l leans toward social commentary, focused on how environments tend to harm Black women.
In her poem “My Sister’s Keeper” from the book “BLACK GIRL, CALL HOME,” she writes:
“What’ does it mean
I keepeth my sister?
That I hold on to her
And love her in ugly,
Rotten, uncertainty.”