In their introduction to Poemhood: Our Black Revival, editors Amber McBride, Taylor Byas and Erica Martin describe the anthology as “a celebration—a homage to the beauty and musicality of Black poetry, folklore, and history.” As the editors themselves go on to reflect, Black culture and art has for too long been subject to an “exclusivity of story,” presented beyond Black communities only in revised forms or erased from classrooms and canons entirely. Poemhood represents a vital corrective to such exclusion.
McBride, Byas and Martin pull no punches in their anthology’s curation of over 30 writers. Black literary icons such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lord and James Baldwin populate these pages along with an impressive lineup of contemporary poets including Nikki Giovanni, Danez Smith and the editors themselves.
The contents are not organized chronologically “because, in Black culture, ancestors are ever present—their strength and legacy guide us long after they are gone.” Instead, Poemhood takes its structural cues from mixtapes: The poems, listed as numbered “tracks,” are organized into loosely thematic sections called “volumes.” Each track is followed by an “outro,” a short annotation that provides context while resisting analytical authority. The outros’ open-endedness encourages readers to reflect on their own interpretations of the poems, embodying one of the anthology’s goals: to “speak to the eclectic Black experience and emphasize how it is not a monolithic culture.”
For example, in the chilling 1973 poem, “A Fable,” Etheridge Knight (who released his debut collection in 1968 after an eight-year prison sentence) depicts seven incarcerated Black men and women arguing about the true path to freedom. As the poem ends, the prisoners are “still arguing; and to this day they are still in their prison cells, their stomachs / trembling with fear.” In stark contrast, editor Martin’s “(un)chained” is a defiant declaration of hope in the face of mass incarceration. “go ahead— / trap our bodies / in shackles / behind bars,” Martin writes, “as if you could lock up / our will to survive.”
In her 1991 poem “won’t you celebrate with me,” Lucille Clifton writes, “come celebrate with me / that everyday / something has tried to kill me / and has failed.” What makes Poemhood such a triumphant and necessary work is its uncompromising commitment to the celebration of Black life, in spite of pain. By shuffling classic and contemporary poets together, the editors show how this tension plays out across decades and centuries, but magic, restoration and joy always prevail. In the anthology’s final poem, Nikki Giovanni writes, “We learn to negotiate / The space between / Imagination and possibility / Reality and probability.” The poets in this anthology negotiate the terms of celebration across time and experience, and the result is extraordinary.
