Afrocentric Poetry

Empowerment through written and spoken word

What is Afro-centric Poetry?

The term ‘Afrocentric’ refers to something that focuses on African and black culture and history. Afrocentrism encourages the preservation and elevation of contemporary African American and Black British culture. It is designed to empower peoples of the African diaspora. Molefi Kete Asante (1997) explains the Afrocentric Paradigm as the optimal centrality of the African experience. Afro-centricity is the goal. Don't you love the beautiful linguistic weight this word holds? It focuses on Africans as subjects rather than objects defined from the outside by white individuals. There can be Afrocentric clothing, Afrocentric music, Afrocentric dance, Afrocentric cuisine, Afro-centric jewellery, Afro-centric curriculums and today, I bring to you “Afro-centric poetry”. Poetry sheds a beautiful light on the African and black experience over the centuries and eras. I’m a massive fan of poetry and have recently been reading the brilliant work of Rupi Kaur and Ijeoma Umebinyuo. Through poetry, one can feel heard and seen. When we read or hear a poem about something that we too go through or think about or have felt, we can feel a warm hug and our own experiences acknowledged and understood. Poetry is not just a written form thankfully but can be an invaluable tool people of diverse backgrounds have to express their frustrations about the inequalities in society or just voice their hope for better race relations and inclusion between different communities.

Taken from a variety of poets and spoken word artists spanning different generations, you’ll find this small collection of poetry below which affirms and integrates the voices of people of African descent as a necessary and pre-eminent perspective. These poets included here use words to blissfully articulate the black struggle as well as black hope for the future. Paul Laurence Dunbar is generally considered one of the most significant black poets who launched a new era in African American literature. He was one of the first black poets to tap into African centeredness and so have so many poets and spoken word artists since, such as Kwame Dawes, Derek Walcott, Amanda Gorman and Patience Andrew. I could go on and on. For now, revel in the language mastery of these 12 amazing poets:

1. Black Magic by Chucky Black (2015)

Part Two. The Gospel. Pray with me.

To quote my grandma,

I am black,

Ain’t I black?

Ain’t I still here?

One.

For this, we’ll need a cauldron,  

a large dark thing that carries more than it should.

It needs to be cast iron steady,

it best is ready for molten things, ancient things.

It best be ready for West African dynasties, an ocean that swallowed our kin. And America; the great wilderness.

It better be southern and pan-fried,

it better be black and coin everything else for real.

It better sound like Al Green and Etta James and bob Marley and Tupac Shakur when it sings.

If this is magic y’all

Not the flint and glitter of Tiffany,

Not the fairytales that actually refute our claim to throne,

but that stuff of old that it takes a tribe kind of magic,

the same kind of sorcery that can take a white man’s bloody Bible,

dip it in mud and call it pure.

They can take that same Bible and say no,

they can find glory and it does not come in your hue,

This is a raven feather and all of its stigma, this is a voodoo in who they cannot wrap their tongues around.

This is a Negro’s fight or the most tangible kind of magic.

Watch and we’ll turn nothing into everything.  

Watch us turn empty stomaches into gold.

Broken record players into hip hop,

Into gold.

I feel like with trauma,

its a fire,

its a revolution,

into gold.

Black be gold.

My mother has raised three golden children in a country that still calls us dirt.

Our mother is a grace I will admit that has ever lived,

Though she would never admit that.

My mother knows humble,

My mother is a child of Jamaica and has survived two brutal lands,

and can still cook the meanest jerk chicken,

and can still curse your arse out in patois, without blinking an eye,

my mother is the epitome of Black girl magic, all grown up.

my father, my father, like other Stevens, defiantly survived being black in America,

my father knows bruises,

my father be all hard head and gentle hands,

my father is a builder,

my father is in the beginnings for everything,

my father book-capped for the first panthers  in LA,

and shook hands with the first founder of the Krisps,

my father can thrive anywhere,

If resiliency ain’t magic, I don't know what is.

If my family ain’t magic, I don't know what is.

If Black ain’t magic, we sure do live in a dark place.

But I am here to tell y’all,

That the sun is shining

That I am shining,

That I am here

That I am black,

That I am - Magic.

2. Maya Angelou’s Still I Rise (1978)

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

3. The Haunting by Ashley-Rose (2020)

You let too many of us over,

you thought I forgot,

Thought I didn't remember but i tried to warn you.

When New Orleans drowned,

it was from the trail of tears overflowing

from native women and Haitian wives whose husbands you hired,

to help you win your freedom,

only to hang us and blow us up at sea.

You thought I was a memory.

You didn't taste me in your gumbo,

Didn’t know that I linked hands with my African ancestors under the Atlantic,

You didn't know that Yemaya had mercy and saved me.

My heart became a little blackish,

salted by the sodium I was forced to add to my food,

insults and wounds, to preserve myself from your whips, chains and politics.

I tried to be complacent, and then for 400 years, you stole and encaged my black babies,

Today you sell their souls to prisons instead of plantations,

the kids are kicking back cans of tear gas,

they are asphyxiated by your bended knees,

they can’t breathe through a pandemic called racism,

that you systemically disguised as Covid-19.

Still you rape me.

I hear my granddaughters yelling ‘me too’ and ‘I cant take the historical echo’.

so I put your buildings a-blaze, I put fire to tongue,

I turn you a lullabies into lyrics about lynchings,

I remixed Billie Holiday and Ida B. Wells,

I taught my babies to go vegan,

yet still question your strange fruit,

We still hang.

I turnt their story times and their bed night rides into KKK night rides,

I taught them astrology by following the Drakon Gord,

Taught them to master the retrograde of your mercury,

move into the great accelerator,

and realise they were the crystal babies with the vision

who could see that the revolution would happen in the age of Aquarius,

Yes, its me.

Back from another galaxy,

the midnight in my melanin,

You tried to erase from history.

You disrespected and destroyed my temples

and defected on my graves in Egypt,

You didn't know that a female pharaoh rather ‘spite her nose to save face,

You didn't know that my grandbabies would behead white supremacy and the statue of your son Christopher Columbus in the most racist city of Boston,

They didn't know that they would resurrect me,

a Nebian Queen, a monareist,

Say her name,

Sandra bland,

Say her name,

You didn’t know I was the ghost writer.

that pen the post of the morning,

I sent if off as postcard from my daughter Dr Maya Angelou,

You did know that you electing Joy Harjo as your United States’ Poet Laurete

It was a smoke signal from the ancestral realm,

a warning from a siren from the sea,

to tell your police officers who used to be my land snatchers,

who became my great great grandson’s slave catchers,

that in 2020, you don't wanna be worried with me,

not for another day,

not for another decade,

damn sure, not for another century.

from this Black mother,

let my children’s children’s children’s be free from this land that you built on

Black lives and backs

or forever be haunted by me.

4. Coal by Audre Lorde (1976)

I

Is the total black, being spoken

From the earth's inside.

There are many kinds of open.

How a diamond comes into a knot of flame  

How a sound comes into a word, coloured  

By who pays what for speaking.

Some words are open

Like a diamond on glass windows

Singing out within the crash of passing sun

Then there are words like stapled wagers

In a perforated book—buy and sign and tear apart—

And come whatever wills all chances

The stub remains

An ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge.

Some words live in my throat

Breeding like adders. Others know sun

Seeking like gypsies over my tongue

To explode through my lips

Like young sparrows bursting from shell.

Some words

Bedevil me.

Love is a word another kind of open—

As a diamond comes into a knot of flame

I am black because I come from the earth's inside  

Take my word for jewel in your open light.

5. Poem No.4 by Ijeoma Umebinyuo (2015)

You call me “sister”

not because you

are my blood

but because

you understand

the kind of tragedies

we both have endured

to come back into loving

ourselves

again

&

again.

6. Lift Every Voice and Sing by James Weldon Johnson (2000)

Lift every voice and sing  

Till earth and heaven ring,

Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;

Let our rejoicing rise

High as the listening skies,

Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.  

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,

Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,

Bitter the chastening rod,

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;  

Yet with a steady beat,

Have not our weary feet

Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,

Out from the gloomy past,  

Till now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,  

God of our silent tears,

Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;

Thou who hast by Thy might  

Led us into the light,

Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,

Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;

Shadowed beneath Thy hand,  

May we forever stand.  

True to our God,

True to our native land.

7. __________ my loved blacknesses & some blacknesses I knew by Khadijah Queen  (2015)

especially the rarest kind / or the kind named Priscilla G & not drowning

in bleach cream / creamy spin / but spinning blades on a black Nina

gunship in the gargantuan ghetto / not killing & maiming my brothers & potential

husbands / when the working mothers give up & when they do not

& when boys in their mad survivalist tactics

want a movie sex parade / silk-edging their sweaty fists in 30 watt lit basements

just because / death switch of a future /

none of that has to do with any kind of blackness or a crazed horizon

in the plumed summers of Los Angeles wherein television reenactments of real

fathers didn't occur enough for news sidebars / but more than generally believed /

they showed up to dailiness / cash in hand but as the school year revved up

the rest of the madness had nowhere to hide / ballooned horizon /

chemical concerns / fire up the blue turbines / fire up

unconscious intention plus the acne of ignorance / on the city's glittery filth façade

but not because of blackness / not for me /

when I would get home sometimes there might be food

sometimes just blackness I could live on / which I love

8. Homage to My Hips by Lucille Clifton (1987)

these hips are big hips

they need space to

move around in.

they don't fit into little

petty places. these hips

are free hips.

they don't like to be held back.

these hips have never been enslaved,  

they go where they want to go

they do what they want to do.

these hips are mighty hips.

these hips are magic hips.

i have known them

to put a spell on a man and

spin him like a top!

9. Resilience by Amanda Shea (2021)

The saying goes when the tough get going, the going get tough

Must’ve not had met my mother,

The scars she bears are invisible,

only those with the third eye could see,

you see her body is strong,

agile but weakened by her experiences.

Black women are too only be strong,

No complaints, no check ins only checkups,

to ensure the body is intact,

heavy the heard who wears the crown,

But I see it slipping, weight on her shoulders.

She carries worlds around,

We simply orbit in her universe,

even when she's lost in her own space,

who will carry her burdens?

I mean her depression, her anxiety, her bipolar, her wallet.

So don't need no man but society’s price tags tells her different stories.

Ones filled with fairytales, unbeknowst to her,

for she's a dollar in a dream mentality,

Don't worry, I got this swag,

I can do bad all by myself,

no two cents to rub together but rubbed out meals.

Who will nourish her soul?

It’s tired, been beaten,

but not by life, by family,

who cast her away, didn't want to help her rewrite her wrongs,

running away from generational trauma,

She's out of breath, panic attacks her nervous system,

like a baby she bursts, she self-soothes.

Resilient.

Black women overcome so many obstacles and when asked, ‘how are you?’ They reply,

my mother replies,

I reply.

I’m fine.

10. The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes (1994)

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

11. Children of the Sun by Fenton Johnson (1888-1958)

We are children of the sun,

Rising sun!

Weaving Southern destiny,

Waiting for the mighty hour

When our Shiloh shall appear

With the flaming sword of right,

With the steel of brotherhood,

And emboss in crimson die

Liberty! Fraternity!

We are the star-dust folk,

   Striving folk!

Sorrow songs have lulled to rest;

Seething passions wrought through wrongs,

Led us where the moon rays dip

In the night of dull despair,

Showed us where the star gleams shine,

And the mystic symbols glow—

Liberty! Fraternity!

We have come through cloud and mist,

   Mighty men!

Dusk has kissed our sleep-born eyes,

Reared for us a mystic throne

In the splendor of the skies,

That shall always be for us,

Children of the Nazarene,

Children who shall ever sing

Liberty! Fraternity!

12.….And Raise Beauty to Another Level of Sweetness by Kalamu Ya Salaam (1969 - 1989)

You are a fresh flower

bursting boldly

into a hard world

with a softness

strong as steel

Reaching for sunlight

you raise yourself

up from down under

out of the degrading dirt

society has so routinely

dumped on women,

you have transformed

manure, muck and mire

into fertilizer

Springing self assertedly

past winter weather

you bring a sweet fragrant

incense and inspiration

into musty places

stale with the stuffiness

of misogynic sexist

status quos

You blossom, you bloom,

you expand and grow,

raising beauty

to a bedazzling higher

and healthier level of

light, life and love

Grow on Black rose

Black woman grow on!

Reading poetry is a way of healing and for the poet, a way of sharing his or her vulnerabilities influenced by the common black experience. It is our tool to use for a permanent commentary on a page with ink about our manhood and womanhood. I hope you have found strength in reading and listening to these pieces of poetry and a surge of power to battle through any challenge you may be facing with regards to racial relations within yourself, family, community or workplace. If you are new to poetry, know that it is not an archaic art form, it has been revitalised by a plethora of new writers and creatives in recent times. I hope that somewhere among the lines of these poems it is even encouraged you to take up a pen and write something from the heart about diversity and inclusion.

****We do not own the rights to these poems.****