During the Black History Month and beyond (cuz face it, every month deserves Black History), this blog will honor people who demonstrated critical elements of the Black / African experience with commemorative poems. This poem pays homage to anti-colonial pro-African leaders-of-nation, such as Mandela, Tutu, Nkrumah, Nyerere, Lumumba, Nasser, Gdaffi, Sankara, and Kwando.
Read more "Africa for Africans"This poem pays homage to Eartha Kitt, dazzling entertainer and magnificent personality.
Read more "Us of the Earth"This poem pays homage to all the honorable mentions that didn’t have an attributed poem in the Maroons’ Ancestral Libation poetic series this year. And for Black people in general, as a people.
Read more "Honorable Mentions in the Maroons’ Ancestral Libation poetic series"During Black History Month, this blog will honor people who demonstrated critical elements of the Black / African experience with commemorative poems. This poem pays homage to Carter G. Woodson, second African-American to graduate harvard, grandfather of Black History, and proponent of independent Black education. Woodoson’s essay Mis-Education of a Negro was years ahead of its time and is still salient today – a must-read for any Black scholar.
Read more "History Makes Life"During Black History Month, this blog will honor people who demonstrated critical elements of the Black / African experience with commemorative poems. This poem pays homage to Bayard Rustin, undersung March on Washington strategist, Martin Luther King Jr. colleague, and gay rights activist. Thank you, Mr. Rustin, for your service.
Read more "Baby I’m Bayard"During Black History Month, this blog will honor people who demonstrated critical elements of the Black / African experience with commemorative poems. This poem draws inspiration from the work of Distinguished Professor of Law Kimberlé Crenshaw whose critical theory on the intersections of social identities crystalizes how social identities interact in the socio-political sphere (and more importnantly, our every day lives).
Read more "Crossroads"During Black History Month, this blog will honor people who demonstrated critical elements of the Black / African experience with commemorative poems. This poem draws inspiration from Stephen Bantu Biko, anti-apartheid revolutionary and Black consciousness advocate, who reminded us all that Black is Beautiful
Read more "Black is Beautiful"During Black History Month, this blog will honor people who demonstrated critical elements of the Black / African experience with commemorative poems. This poem pays homage to Haitian Revolutionary Jean-Jacques “the Tiger” Dessallines, first leader of the first independent Black nation. This is the third poem in a month-long series.
Read more "America’s Avenger"This poem pays homage to the Igbo Landign revolt, in which enslaved Africans overtook their captors’ ship and predicting their fate in the Americas, as legend has it, chose to walk home across the Atlantic, back to Igboland.
Read more "Igbo Landing"some walked Across the Atlantic
rather than live under the heels of devils
still some scanned the clouds
locked onto the mountain tops
carved out hidden trails
endured pilgrimage, became
free people of the caverns, reborn of the swamps…
Read more "Maroons of the Lagoon"
Marooners' Lagoon 