By From Nikki Giovanni to Maya Angelou, Claude McKay to Langston Hughes, Leopold Senghor to Saul Williams, from almost any dub poet or rapper you can name, there has been no shortage of this written and often oral tradition within the Black community.
As African-descended people, orality holds importance in our expression and is evident in Somali poetry, the traditions of djelis and griots, dancehall emcees, and preaching.
In Canada, we are blessed with some of the most decorated and world-renowned poets, including Dionne Brand, Canisia Lubrin, NourbeSe Philip, Ian Williams, and George Elliott Clarke.
The late Honourable Dr. Louise Bennett Coverley, known as Miss Lou, was Jamaica’s most famous poet who spent her final twenty years in Canada. In addition, many of us have engaged with dub poetry, spoken word often performed by such greats as Lillian Allen, d’bi young, Anthony Bansfield, Shauntay Grant, Jemeni, and Sean Mauricette. And we owe these poets everything as their words decorate our language with nuggets of the truest expression of our humanity.
In this article, I ask 16 of today’s poets from across the country why poetry is important for Black Canadians. Many have completed their most recent books in the context of a global pandemic and racial justice movement.
Based in Toronto, ON
Ontario’s First Poet Laureate, 2021
I Am Not My Struggles (self-published, 2018)
“Poetry is a language that allows us to reflect on ourselves. It makes room for our community to explore our stories creatively. It inspires vulnerability and self-expression. It can help our community inspire one another to tell our stories authentically and see one another as our true selves.”
{https://www.instagram.com/reel/CjBQNWsKB__/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link}
Based in Toronto, ON
“Woken & Broken,” a poem (available online)
Make the World New: The Poetry of Lillian Allen (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2021)
"So many young people are coming to voice through poetry. Poetry is such a peaceful and beautiful way to show our unique minds and share love in the world."
Based in Toronto, ON
Wires that Sputter (also available as an audiobook) (McClelland & Stewart, 2023)
“We choose poetry for all sorts of reasons: for mourning; a way of experiencing other worlds; for protest language; for proof of life and making sense of the insensible. I write to remember that I sputter with purpose and mean something. That ‘we’ count and matter and flourish together.”
{https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq3WBoVJ9WV/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link}
Based in Mississauga, ON
Poet Laureate of Mississauga 2021-2024
Gills (Wolsak and Wynn, 2023)
“Today, poetry is seemingly a fast-selling poultry enterprise, the science our technological era needs to apply in subtitling generational silence, an affordable medley of nuclear sentences at the face of certain war(s) facing humanity. A small-scale-looking yet formidable genre that could get out of sight and/ hand. Consider the unintended ampler picture of (the late 560 BC tyrant) Peisistratus of Athens, Dionysus festival(s) bringing about the discovery of the first drama laureate, Thespis.”
{https://www.instagram.com/p/CWHJRMCvKa5/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link}
Based in Montreal, QC
Bottom Rail on Top (Brick Books, 2023)
“I think poetry can be a kind of gathering, a kind of attention, that only we can bring to each other, and which we can use to keep enriching and delving deeper into this ongoing conversation about what it means to be us, what it has meant and what it will mean going forward.”
{https://www.instagram.com/p/CXMcdG4FALb/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link}
Based in Toronto, ON/ Nova Scotia
Canticles III (MMXXII) (Guernica Editions, 2022)
J'Accuse...! (Poem Versus Silence) (Exile Editions, 2021)
Where Beauty Survived (Knopf Canada, 2021)
White (Gaspereau Press, 2021)
“Poetry is compact Gospel, incisive Testament, the annunciation of liberation and the denunciation of oppression. It canvasses history and the news, the Gospel and the blues, to show us our very selves in insistent metamorphosis, fulfilling prophecies.”
Based in: Saskatoon, SK
Little Black Lives Matter (Penguin Random House, 2023)
stay up: racism, resistance, and reclaiming Black freedom (Annick, 2023)
“I believe poetry can be a gateway to a whole new world of possibilities. It drives at the heart of imagination, which can often be an untapped source of joy, confidence, and inspiration for people of all ages.”
{https://www.instagram.com/p/CfCtDqUP7yO/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link}
Based in Chicago, IL
Perennial (Rosetta Press/self-published, 2023)
“Poetry captures the essence of an experience, making it more potent and durable. Traumatic incidents are often difficult to put into words, but I find that poetry permits me to transform pain or grief into something beautiful, potentially healing the poet and reader.”
{https://www.instagram.com/p/CpVyvkKKt7Z/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link}
Based in Vancouver, BC
Junie (Book*hug 2022)
“Poetry is important to our community because it's an opportunity to share stories through a unique connection to language. Poetry allows us a moment to breathe and to move into celebration even amongst the most difficult moments.”
Sargasso Sea Scrolls (Mawenzi House, 2023)
Rhetoric of Resistance, Labor of Love The EcoPoetics of Nationhood in the Poetry and Prose of Lasana M. Sekou (House of Nehesi Publishers, 2023)
Mothering, Community, and Friendship (Demeter Press, 2022)
Confluences 3 Essays on the New Canadian Literature (Mawenzi House Publishers, 2022)
“Poetry is the essence of spirituality, healing, and prophecy.”
Based in Toronto, ON
All That Remains (Up From the Roots, 2022)
“Poetry has always been the pulse of the community; a way to sum up what is happening to and with us in a way that resonates with how we vibrate as a community.”
{https://www.instagram.com/reel/CqJQuJWAXS2/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link}
Based in Toronto, ON
Three Hundred Poems (Write Bloody North, 2023)
“Poetry can bring a community together through the use of language. It creates an avenue to express the hidden facets of life and give a collective voice to the most marginalized in society while bridging the gap between strangers.”
{https://www.instagram.com/p/Cqnf70BAysn/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link}
Based in Toronto, ON
Manifest (Self-published, 2020)
“Poetry is needed for our community because it's still a beautiful mode to express emotion, values and visions for the future. Through the power of language that poetry allows, we can be vulnerable and hopeful, invent and reinvent ways to communicate our most intense desires, delve into complicated relationships, and demand a better world.”
{https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq8fI8LJtYF/?img_index=1}
Based in Toronto/Jamaica
Poet Laureate of Jamaica
Hurricane Watch: New and Collected Poems (Carcanet Press, 2022)
“Poetry belongs to the people. It is the one craft that offers possibilities to everyone to take words into their mouth and toss them around to see them fall into shape. Poets don’t need a vast publishing apparatus to get the word out, so it is hard to corral, control, exploit and suppress. It is the most democratic of the arts.
Based in the GTA
The Wild Woman is Speaking (self-published, 2021)
“Poetry is important to the Black community because art is an expression of voice, and poetry reminds us of the power in the written word. We chant, we mantra, we repeat, we rhyme, we manipulate language into spell work; poetry is a loud expression of the vitality of our Blackness.”
{https://www.instagram.com/p/CmCoifxJZlN/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link}
Based in Vancouver, BC
Divine Animal (Write Blood North, 2020)
“We need poetry because it is one of the few spaces where language can tend to the ambiguous, emotional-spiritual urgency that orients our lives but has little room to be expressed in most other forms of communication. Poetry declares us human, pronounces us alive.”
{https://www.instagram.com/reel/CkHKkt1ubBU/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link}
Recent release
Shades of Black by Carlos Anthony
(James Lorimer & Company, April 1)
Blinded by the Brass Ring by Patricia Scarlett
(Baraka Books, April 1)
Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe
(Knopf Canada, April 4)
(Wolsak and Wynn, April 4)
The Song of Wrath by Sarah Raughley
(Simon & Schuster, April 18)
Sandy Toes: A Summer Adventure by Shauntay Grant, illustrated by Candice Bradley
(Abrams, April 25)
Song & Dread by Otoniya J. Okot Bitek
(Talonbooks, March 15)
