Since the beginning of time, oral traditions have been cryptic lessons to help one through life. Instead of folklore, many black people adopted poetry. A potent tool for communicating feelings, ideas, and experiences. For many, poetry serves as a way to preserve culture, celebrate love, mourn loss, and connect through the trials and triumphs of our human experiences. This is true for many Black women who have historically used poetry to define love, life, and experiences for the Black woman. Truth is the ink that guides their pen and Howard University serves as the pinnacle of the Black woman’s rebellion to freedom. Poetry is more than words; it is the language of breaking the rules, and these women are the fiercest.
Phyllis Wheatley is the first Black woman to publish poetry. She was a slave who wrote poetry of her fond memories of ancestry, faith, and her home, which she was ripped from in Africa. Through all the grief and pain, this woman somehow found solace in the Bible. The Psalms gave her a literary escape and a means to be free of silence. Poetry was this Black Woman’s first right of passage to the world.
Poetry Is a Calling
The Harriet Tubman Quadrangle is a powerful steppingstone for the women of Howard University. A dormitory known for its rich history, for which the halls are named. Wheatley Hall is an homage to the great Phyllis Wheatley. In this Hall, History was made.
When asked, “What does poetry mean to you?” three young Black women answered, “Poetry is life.” Jada Carter, Paige Thomas, and Kiarra Thompson are three young women who felt called to poetry.
Paige Thomas, a junior health science major from Atlanta, continued the thought, saying, “Poetry is in every form and in everything.” Poetry is the freedom of the soul, an art that allows the mind to be free. In a world that can be cruel, poetry provides its writers refuge and mental clarity.
“I have been able to encounter so many individuals who have essentially saved my mental health,” she said, emphasizing the importance of community. Jada Carter, a junior elementary education major and legal communications minor from Memphis, Tennessee, is a founding member of Selah Poets. Carter is the president of the first poetry organization at Howard University. An idea that started right in her dorm room on Wheatley Hall. Poetry has guided many young Black women to express their inner thoughts and create something new. Where does such courage come from?
The Black Woman Birthed Poetry
Poetry is a lifeline between the past, present, and future. Words woven together to tell a story that will hopefully save and inform the next. The poem itself is a courageous tool to uplift one from societal and political confinement. While they are often written in riddles, these literary goldmines are the beginning of a journey. Where love lights the torch to pathways of hope and compassion.
Nikki Giovanni, a world-renowned poet, activist, and educator, single-handedly propelled the Black Arts Movement, using poetry as a gateway to freedom. Giovanni wrote poetry about the daily lives of Black men and women who stood during the revolution. She was also a member of the LGBTQ+ community.
Giovanni’s writing became famous during the brink of change in America for Black people. The emergence of love and unity after the violence that plagued Black communities following the Civil Rights Movement. Her poetry symbolized something far greater than resistance; her poetry gave light to a love of no bounds.
Kairra Thompson, a member of The Sterling Allen Brown Society chapter of Howard University (SABES) and a senior film major, English minor from Montgomery, Alabama shared, “Being queer just adds another layer…I had no idea there were so many femme poets.” Giovanni’s poems about love defined it as a balancing act. Love was to her what colors are to a painter—complementary and contradicting. Giovanni spoke with fluidity, believing that love requires a willingness to change habits, not oneself. Poetry is a language of love. In her poem “Resignation,” she writes, “I love you ’cause I changed my life to love you.” Below is an excerpt from the poem:
“Because winters flow into springs
And the air clears after a storm
Because only my love for you
Despite the charms against gravity
Keeps me from falling off this Earth
Into another dimension
I love you
Because it is the natural order of things.”
Toni Morrison, another world-renowned novelist, poet, and Howard University alumna, used literature to defy the stains of racism that tainted her childhood, self-reflection, and ideals of what America was to Black people. When it came to love, Morrison took her time to define its paradox—what it is and what it can never be. In her 1993 book Paradise, Morrison described love as a “diploma”—something earned through continuous effort. To Morrison, love is not a gift or something that just happens. It is a choice, a lifelong commitment to one another. Below is an excerpt from the novel Paradise:
“Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural, you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God. You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love just because you want it. You can only earn – by practice and careful contemplations – the right to express it and you have to learn how to accept it.”
Both Giovanni and Morrison guided readers to think outside the box beyond constraints. Using complex literary devices and dialect in their poem. Writing the complexities of Black life through the lens of a Black woman. These two legends viewed love as a commitment that stems from one’s agency. Relationships are not built on magic, but on the work it takes to create one’s own bliss.
Black Women Still Yearn for Love
Howard University stands as the Black mecca of creativity, and the new generation of poets is rebranding love on their own terms. “What I put on the page is my most accurate self,” Thompson said. These women allow authenticity to guide their words and find love in everything—changing the narrative from waiting for a man to becoming love itself.
Dawn by Jada Carter (President of Selah Poets)
“Beautiful Black Woman
With lips made from love, for love, saved as she self loves
Skin smooth like the pearls of Mother Earth’s roaring waters
Dimples, and dots and freckles too
Beauty marks in the dark that shine as light pursues
Creases and folds never to appear as she grows—forever young”
Me and My Bitches by Kiarra Thompson (Managing Editor of Sterling Notes)
“Me and My Bitches
Me n my guhs chillin is a ritual
We take time, commune, heal our individuals
We break bread n smoke weed, talk shit n patch seams
We laugh loud n real proud, stargaze n share dreams
Thru thic and thin, we’on do no tic fuh tac
Thru high warduhs, we gon have each otha back
Long as dat creek don’t wanna rise in duh morn
Imma thank God for my bitches bein born”
Lover by Paige T. (Member of Selah Poets)
“I am truly a lover of everything
helpless crushes and daydreams
earth-shattering cries when they aren’t as they seem
hoping to see them throughout my day
even the feeling when they never look my way
I am a lover
of every emotion
simply because
as long as I can feel
every piece of me will always be real”
Fall in Love with Poetry, Fall in Love with Yourself, and Find Love in Someone Else
Giovanni and Morrison used their creativity to define love before there was a definition. Living in an era with many boundaries and injustices, they shaped their understanding of love based on what it was not. At a time when it was the Black woman’s job to uplift the Black man, somehow compassion for the Black woman was lost.
Today, women in poetry live in a luxury of freedom—one that expands the bounds of love beyond just romantic relationships. Love has been redefined to include self-love, friendship and kinship. This new generation of Black women poets and writers are unapologetic and patient in their quest for love, having studied its definitions from the greats. They found a love that will live on for generations to come. Love that is redefined to be more than romantic. These new poets understand that love is in everything; you just have to look for it.
Featured image/photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash.