Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, Phillis Wheatley. 1773.

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Published in 1773, the full title of Phillis Wheatley’s poetry collection is Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley, Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatley, of Boston, in New England. This collection includes 39 poems written by Wheatley, the first professional African American poet and also the first Black American woman poet to have her work published. Because Wheatley was an enslaved woman, many colonists did not believe she had written the poems herself and so her master, John Wheatley, had to convince people that the work was truly her own while a year earlier in 1772 she had to defend her authorship of her poetry in court. Her poems are influenced by Greek mythology and the works of Alexander Pope–who she greatly admired–and many centre on significant figures of her day as can be seen in her poems "On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield", "To S. M. a young African Painter, on seeing his Works" and "To the King's Most Excellent Majesty".

The Book of American Negro Poetry, ed. James Weldon Johnson. Quinn & Boden Company, 1922.

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Compiled by African American writer and civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson–who was at the time the executive secretary of the NAACP–The Book of American Negro Poetry is the first publication to collect poetic works by African American poets. The first edition, published in 1922, featured the work of thirty-one poets, and a second edition followed in 1931 with a new preface and poems by nine additional poets. The collection includes works by James Weldon Johnson, W. E. B. Du Bois, Jessie Fauset, Anne Spencer and Alice Dunbar-Nelson.

Negro Poets and Their Poems, ed. Robert T. Kerlin. Associated Publishers, 1923.

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Robert T. Kerlin’s poetry collection, Negro Poets and Their Poems, is one of the major poetry anthologies of the Harlem Renaissance. Kerlin was an educator, minister and civil rights activist and previously in 1919 he published The Voice of the Negro, which was a collection of excerpts from African American newspapers. His collection Negro Poets and Their Poems was intended to be a “defense of black people” and it is dedicated to “To the Black and Unknown Bards”. Along with biographical details of the poets and illustrations, the collection includes poetry from Phillis Wheatley, Adolphus Johnson, Angelina W. Grimké, Langston Hughes, and W. E. B. DuBois as well as many others.

An Anthology of Verse by American Negroes, eds. Newman Ivey White and Walter Clinton Jackson. Trinity College Press, 1924.

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The 1924 poetry collection An Anthology of Verse by American Negroes was compiled by Newman Ivey White and Walter Clinton Jackson, who stated in their preface that, “As Southern white men who desire the most cordial relations between the races we hope that this volume will help its white readers more clearly to understand the Negro’s feelings on certain questions that myst be settled by the cooperation of the two races.” The anthology features the works of thirty-four poets including Phillis Wheatley, James Weldon Johnson, H. Cordelia Ray, William Stanley Beaumont Braithwaite and Paul Laurence Dunbar who, with thirty-one poems included, is the most featured poet in the volume.

Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, ed. Countee Cullen. Kensington Publishing Corp, 1927.

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Edited by Countee Cullen, an African American poet, novelist and playwright, the 1927 anthology Caroling Dusk is a collection of poetry featuring the works of thirty-eight African American poets. These poets include Countee Cullen himself, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes and Georgia Douglas Johnson as well as nine year old Lula Lowe Weeden, who was the youngest poet in the collection. Biographical sketches of the poets were also included in the anthology. Along with The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922), Negro Poets and Their Poems (1923) and An Anthology of Verse by American Negroes (1924) [see above entries], this collection is considered to be one of the major poetry collections of the Harlem Renaissance, and it was republished in 1955, 1974, and 1995.

Voices of the Living and the Dead, Linton Kwesi Johnson. Creation for Liberation, 1974.

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Linton Kwesi Johnson is a Jamaica-born, British-based dub-poet and activist. Johnson frequently collaborates with reggae producer/artist Dennis Bovell to create his performance poetry, which involves the recital of his own verse in Jamaican patois over dub-reggae. His poetry is unashamedly political and Afrocentric, and Johnson often explores the experiences of Afro-Caribbean and other ethnic minorities in Britain in his works. Published in 1974, Voices of the Living and the Dead is Johnson’s first collection of poetry.

Inglan is a Bitch, Linton Kwesi Johnson. 1981.

Listen to Linton Kwesi Johnson performing his poem "Inglan is a bitch" here.

Inglan is a Bitch is the third poetry collection of Jamaica-born, British-based dub-poet and activist, Linton Kwesi Johnson. Like his previous collections, many of these poems were written to music, and several even featured on the LPs "Dread, Beat an’ Blood" (Virgin records), "Forces of Victory" (Island records) and "Bass Culture" (Island records). Poems featured in this collection include "It dread Inna Inglan", "Fite dem back", and "Jamaica lullaby" as well as the title poem, "Inglan is a bitch".

Homegirls & Handgrenades, Sonia Sanchez. 1985.

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Homegirls & Handgrenades is a collection of poetry by Sonia Sanchez, a poet, activist, and scholar who is considered to be one of the most important writers of the Black Arts Movement. Her poetry often melds musical formats such as the blues and jazz, and also uses urban Black vernacular and experimental punctuation, spelling and spacing. As well as published poetry, Sanchez also writes short stories, plays, children’s books and critical essays, and Homegirls & Handgrenades features some of her seminal prose, prose poems, and lyric verses including "A Song" and "a woman celebrating herself and a people". This collection was awarded the American Book Award, and in 2001 Sanchez was awarded the Robert Frost Medal for her contributions to the canon of American poetry.

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Langston Hughes. Penguin Random House, 1994.

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Langston Hughes is an African American poet, novelist, playwright and social activist who was one of the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance and also one of the early pioneers of jazz poetry. His manifesto, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (1926), calls for a confident, racially conscious Black creative movement: “I am ashamed for the black poet who says, 'I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet,' as though his own racial world were not as interesting as any other world.” This confidence racial consciousness is evident in his own poetry, much of which was published in The Crisis—the official magazine of the NAACP—and his work is seen to chronicle the Black experience in America. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes compiles Hughes’ best known poems including "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", "The Weary Blues", "Lunch in a Jim Crow Car" and "Montage of a Dream Deferred".

Propa Propaganda, Benjamin Zephaniah. Bloodaxe Books, 1996.

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Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah is a British writer, dub-poet, musician and professor of poetry and creative writing. His work draws on his own lived experiences of racism, incarceration and his Jamaican heritage along with his anarchism, veganism and rastafarian beliefs. His performance poetry often blends rap and reggae music. Propa Propaganda is Zephaniah’s second poetry collection published with Blood Axe, and it includes his poems "I Have a Scheme", "The Death of Joy Gardner", "White Comedy" and "The Angry Black Poet", all of which were intended to be performed but are still powerful when read.

Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes, Linda D. Addison. Space and Time Books, 2001.

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Linda D. Addison is an American poet and author whose who writes primarily horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes is Addison's second collection of works, following her debut collection of short stories, essays and poetry, Animated Objects, in 1997. In 2001, Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes not only won the 2011 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection, but Addison was the first African American writer to do so, and to date she is a five-time Bram Stoker Award winner. This collection features thirty-one narrative poems that explore fantasy and the fantastic, and also includes illustrations by Marge Simon.

Too Black, Too Strong, Benjamin Zephaniah. Bloodaxe Books, 2001.

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The struggles of Black Britons are at the centre of Benjamin Zephaniah’s collection Too Black, Too Strong, which is the last of three volumes he published with Blood Axe. Zephaniah is a British writer, dub-poet, musician and professor of poetry and creative writing and his work often explores themes of race and social (in)justice. This collection is no different, and features poems composed while he was the poet-in-residence at the chambers of Michael Mansfield QC where he sat in on cases such as the Stephen Lawrence and the inquiry into Bloody Sunday. In his preface to Too Black, Too Strong, Zephaniah makes clear the importance of Britain’s political landscape to his work: “‘I live in two places, Britain and the world, and it is my duty to explore and express the state of justice in both of them”.

Celebrations: Rituals of Peace and Prayer, Maya Angelou. Virago, 2006.

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Published in 2006, Celebrations: Rituals of Peace and Prayer is a collection of poetry written by African American poet, memoirist and civil rights activist Maya Angelou. Along with writing poetry, Angelou also published theatrical plays, screenplays for film and television, three collections of essays and seven autobiographies, the first of which, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, was published in 1969. Celebrations features twelve poems, including "On the Pulse of Morning", which she recited at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993, and "A Brave and Startling Truth" which she recited during the 50th anniversary commemoration of the United Nations in 1994.

Being Full of Light, Insubstantial, Linda D. Addison. Space and Time, 2007.

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Being Full of Light, Insubstantial is the third poetry collection by African American poet and writer, Linda D. Addison. Addison writes horror, fantasy, and science fiction and she is a five-time Bram Stoker Award winner with this collection marking Addison’s second Bram Stoker Award. Featuring 100 poems as well as original photography and art by Brian J. Addison, Addison has stated that she was inspired to create the collection following her mother’s Alzheimer's diagnosis.

Zong! M. NourbeSe Philip, 2008.

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M. NourbeSe Philip’s 2008 book-length poem Zong! centres on the victims of the 1781 Zong massacre in which it is estimated that 150 enslaved Africans were murdered by the crew of the British slave ship Zong for financial gain. Philip is a Canadian poet, novelist and essayist who was born in Trinidad and Tobago, and she is known for her experimentation with literary form and her inclusion of social justice themes. History, memory and law are combined in her poem Zong! which is composed entirely of writings taken from the 1783 legal case Gregson v Gilbert that determined the massacre to be legal.

Watch a performance of the poem read by M. NourbeSe Philip here.

Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine. New York: Penguin Books, 2014.

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Published in 2014, Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric is a collection of lyric essays and one book-length poem that explores racism and microaggressions experienced by African Americans. She draws on popular culture and high profile incidents such as the racism directed towards tennis player Serena Williams and victims of police shootings including Trayvon Martin. In order to make the Black experience visible, Rankine also incorporates images of paintings, drawings, sculptures and other media into the collection. In 2015, Citizen: An American Lyric was a New York Times bestseller and the collection has won several awards including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry in 2014 and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry in 2015.

The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948–2013, Derek Walcott. Faber, 2014.

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Sir Derek Alton Walcott is a poet and playwright from Saint Lucia. His first poem was published in the newspaper The Voice of St Lucia when he was 14 years old, and five years later at the age of 19 he had self-published two poetry collections: 25 Poems (1948) and Epitaph for the Young: XII Cantos (1949). Walcott identified himself as a “Caribbean writer”, and many of his poems explore the legacy of colonialism and slavery, as well as religious themes influenced by his deeply held spiritualism and Methodist faith. In 1992 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. This collection, The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948–2013, contains poems from across his wide-spanning career including his first widely celebrated poem "A Far Cry from Africa", and his later works such as "The Schooner Flight" and "Sixty Years After".

Chan, Hannah Lowe. Bloodaxe, 2016.

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Chan is the second poetry collection from British writer Hannah Lowe, following her award winning debut collection Chick in 2014. Both collections are inspired by her relationship with her Chinese-Jamaican father, and the titles refer to two of his nicknames, "Chick" and "Chan". In this collection Lowe explores her own Chinese and Jamaican roots through a series of poems about travellers and shape-shifters including a Jamaican alto saxophonist in 1960s London and dreamers who, like her father, travelled from Kingston to Liverpool in 1947 aboard the SS Ormonde.

Bone, Yrsa Daley-Ward. Penguin. 2017.

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Yrsa Daley-Ward is a British writer, model and actor born to a Jamaican mother and Nigerian father. She initially self-published her debut poetry collection, Bone, in 2014, and it was later reissued by Penguin Books with a forward by Kiese Laymon and several new poems. Together, the poems in the collection unearth the essence of what it means to be human: some poems explore Daley-Ward’s own experiences of growing up as a first generation Black British woman, and others delve into themes of religion, societal expectations, depression, loss, love and vulnerability.

Safe Metamorphosis, Otis Mensah. Prototype Publishing, 2020.

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Self-proclaimed “mum’s house philosopher and rap psalmist”, Otis Mensah is a British poet and alternative hip-hop and spoken word artist. Mensah wants his work to challenge dominant and unhealthy models of masculinity, as well as to help break down barriers that preserve poetry as an elite space. His poetry is often accompanied by boom bap instrumentals. In 2018, Mensah was appointed the inaugural Poet Laureate of Sheffield, UK, and his debut poetry collection, Safe Metamorphosis, was published in 2020.

Surge, Jay Bernard. Vintage, 2020.

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Surge is the poetry debut of British poet Jay Bernard. This collection is a queer exploration of Black British history that Bernard developed during his 2016 residency at the George Padmore Institute, and is both political and personal. It focuses on the connection between two significant events in British history: the New Cross Massacre of 1981 which led to the deaths of thirteen young Black people, and the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017. Surge won the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry.

Call Us What We Carry, Amanda Gorman. 2021.

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Amanda Gorman is an American poet and activist, and in 2017 she was established as the inaugural National Youth Poet Laureate. Gorman’s work explores feminism, race, social justice and the African diaspora living in America, and she is influenced by a range of celebrated Black women including Toni Morrison, Phillis Wheatley, Maya Angelou, the Duchess of Sussex, and Michelle Obama. In 2019, she performed her poem "The Hill We Climb" at the inauguration of Joe Biden which features in her 2021 collection Call Us What We Carry.

Bless the Daughter Raised by Voices in Her Head, Warsan Shire. Vintage Publishing, 2022.

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Bless the Daughter Raised by Voices in Her Head is the first full-length collection of poetry by Warsan Shire, a Somali-British writer, poet and teacher. Her poetry features in Beyoncé's 2016 feature-length film Lemonade after her poem "For Women Who Are Difficult to Love" caught the attention of the pop icon. Beyoncé’s 2020 musical film Black Is King also features Shire’s poetry. This collection explores migration, womanhood, motherhood, trauma and resilience and draws on her own experience, as well as the experiences of her loved ones.

Home is Not a Place, Johny Pitts and Roger Robinson. William Collins, 2022.

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Home is Not a Place is a collaboration between award-winning poet Roger Robinson and acclaimed photographer Johny Pitts that asks the question: "What is Black Britain?" The pair rented a red Mini Cooper and travelled from London to Tilbury, Essex–which is where the Empire Windrush docked in 1948–and then carried on travelling across Britain to places including Bristol, Blackpool and Glasgow. Home is Not a Place is the result of their touring exhibition throughout the geography and histories of Britain, comprising photography, poetry and essays reflecting upon all aspects of Black Britishness.

Black Pastoral, Ariana Benson. University of Georgia Press, 2023.

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In 2023, Ariana Benson published her debut poetry collection, Black Pastoral. Benson is a Black American ecopoet born in Norfolk, Virginia, and the collection sets out to be both a love letter and an elegy to the complex relationship Black people have with nature. Through her poems, Benson excavates moments of suffering and moments of thriving in Black history and also ecological histories. Some of the poems explore African American experiences of the slave trade and are born out of Benson’s own research, and in relation to this collection Benson has emphasised the importance and power of poetry: “History should be taught using not only poetry but also other lyrical, humanistic mediums [...] Through poetry, we can understand the gravity of these events beyond just learning facts, and it helps prevent repeating history by knowing it more deeply.” In 2024 Black Pastoral won the Academy of American Poets Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.