Menu

Black Poetic Traditions


Here’s a list with 50 more poetic forms, styles, and traditions either created by Black poets or heavily associated with Black cultures across the African diaspora:
 
1. Concrete Poetry (African American Tradition)
  • Features: Poems in which the physical layout of the words on the page mirrors the subject of the poem.
  • Notable Poets: M. NourbeSe Philip.
2. Afrofuturist Poetry
  • Origin: Blends African culture with technology and science fiction, often exploring alternate futures for Black people.
  • Notable Poets: Tracy K. Smith, Sun Ra.
3. Political Poetry (Black Radical Tradition)
  • Features: Directly engages with issues like colonialism, slavery, racism, and liberation.
  • Notable Poets: Amiri Baraka, June Jordan.
4. Spiritual Poetry (Black Diaspora)
  • Features: Draws from religious and spiritual traditions within the African diaspora, such as Christianity, Yoruba, and Vodou.
  • Notable Poets: Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez.
5. Pan-African Poetry
  • Features: Poems focusing on Pan-African unity, shared African heritage, and global Black consciousness.
  • Notable Poets: Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire.
6. Protest Poetry
  • Features: Poetry that protests against social and political injustices, rooted in Black movements like Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter.
  • Notable Poets: Claudia Rankine, Audre Lorde.
7. Elegiac Poems
  • Features: Focus on grief and loss, particularly reflecting the loss of Black lives to systemic violence.
  • Notable Poets: Natasha Trethewey, Jericho Brown.
8. Call-and-Response Poetry (Diasporic)
  • Features: Engages audience participation in a back-and-forth style, rooted in African oral traditions.
  • Notable Poets: Amiri Baraka, Yusef Komunyakaa.
9. Freedom Songs/Chants
  • Features: Drawn from the Black liberation struggle, these poems often use repetition and rhythm to evoke solidarity.
  • Notable Poets: Langston Hughes, Nikki Giovanni.
10. Nation Language Poetry
  • Features: Uses non-standard English and incorporates Creole or Patois to reflect the linguistic diversity of the African diaspora.
  • Notable Poets: Kamau Brathwaite, Louise Bennett.
11. Black Ecopoetry
  • Features: Poetry connecting Black experiences with nature, climate justice, and environmentalism.
  • Notable Poets: Camille Dungy, Ross Gay.
12. Beat Poetry (Black Adaptation)
  • Features: A countercultural style focusing on spontaneity, jazz-like rhythms, and subverting social norms.
  • Notable Poets: Bob Kaufman, Ted Joans.
13. Dub Poetry (Jamaican Tradition)
  • Features: A form of performance poetry spoken over reggae music, often featuring political messages.
  • Notable Poets: Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jean “Binta” Breeze.
14. Kwaito Poetry
  • Origin: South African township music influencing poetry, mixing social commentary with a dance rhythm.
  • Notable Poets: Lebo Mashile.
15. Spirituals-Inspired Poetry
  • Features: Poems inspired by African American spirituals, focusing on faith, hope, and resilience.
  • Notable Poets: Sterling Brown, Lucille Clifton.
16. Liberation Theology Poetry
  • Features: Poems that explore social justice through a religious lens, often invoking Christianity or African spiritual traditions.
  • Notable Poets: Gwendolyn Brooks, Kwame Dawes.
17. Diasporic Lullabies
  • Features: Poetic lullabies rooted in African oral traditions, conveying comfort, resistance, or survival.
  • Notable Poets: Warsan Shire.
18. Afrocentric Haiku
  • Features: A variation of the traditional haiku that incorporates African cultural references and themes.
  • Notable Poets: Sonia Sanchez, Etheridge Knight.
19. Villanelle (Black Adaptation)
  • Features: Black poets have adapted this 19-line form to express themes of racial identity, love, and resistance.
  • Notable Poets: Marilyn Nelson, Terrance Hayes.
20. Elegy for Black Lives
  • Features: Elegiac poems memorializing Black individuals lost to racial violence or police brutality.
  • Notable Poets: Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine.
21. Neo-Beat Poetry
  • Features: Post-Beat generation Black poets, emphasizing spontaneity, jazz rhythms, and social critique.
  • Notable Poets: Wanda Coleman.
22. Black Sestina
  • Features: The traditional sestina’s rigid structure is used to explore African American experiences, histories, and cultural identities.
  • Notable Poets: Elizabeth Alexander.
23. African American Lament
  • Features: Poetic form that expresses sorrow or mourning for injustices faced by Black communities.
  • Notable Poets: Langston Hughes, Nikki Giovanni.
24. Fugitive Slave Narrative-Inspired Poetry
  • Features: Poems inspired by the narrative structure of fugitive slave autobiographies, recounting journeys to freedom.
  • Notable Poets: Robert Hayden, Paul Laurence Dunbar.
25. Social Justice Sonnets
  • Features: The sonnet form re-imagined to express themes of civil rights, inequality, and racial injustice.
  • Notable Poets: Gwendolyn Brooks, Claude McKay.
26. Praise Poetry (African Diasporic)
  • Features: Rooted in African oral traditions, praise poems celebrate individuals, ancestors, or communities.
  • Notable Poets: Kwame Dawes.
27. Surrealist Black Poetry
  • Features: Uses surrealist techniques to explore Black consciousness and identity.
  • Notable Poets: Jayne Cortez, Will Alexander.
28. Testimonial Poetry
  • Features: A form of confessional poetry focusing on personal narratives of Black lived experiences.
  • Notable Poets: Maya Angelou, Lucille Clifton.
29. Ekphrastic Poetry (Black Visual Art)
  • Features: Poetry responding to or inspired by Black visual art and artists.
  • Notable Poets: Rita Dove.
30. Intersectional Feminist Poetry
  • Features: Focuses on the intersections of race, gender, and class in Black women’s experiences.
  • Notable Poets: Audre Lorde, bell hooks.
31. African Oral Epic Poems
  • Features: Narrative poems passed down orally, telling the heroic journeys of African figures.
  • Notable Poets: Keorapetse Kgositsile.
32. Nuyorican Poetry
  • Origin: Puerto Rican diaspora in New York, heavily influenced by African American poetic traditions.
  • Notable Poets: Sandra María Esteves, Willie Perdomo.
33. Performance Poetry (Spoken Word)
  • Features: Poems written for live performance, using rhythm, emotion, and interaction with the audience.
  • Notable Poets: Saul Williams.
34. Black Experimental Poetry
  • Features: Poetic experimentation with form, structure, and language to challenge traditional narratives.
  • Notable Poets: Nathaniel Mackey.
35. Négritude Poetry
  • Origin: Literary and ideological movement developed by Black intellectuals in the 1930s, celebrating African heritage.
  • Notable Poets: Aimé Césaire, Léon Damas.
36. African Diasporic Pantoum
  • Features: Black poets have adapted this Malay form of interlocking quatrains to reflect African diasporic themes.
  • Notable Poets: John Murillo.
37. Prison Poetry
  • Features: Poems reflecting the experiences of incarceration, particularly within Black communities.
  • Notable Poets: Etheridge Knight, Reginald Dwayne Betts.
38. Epistolary Poetry
  • Features: Poems written in the form of letters, often reflecting the intimate exchange between Black individuals across generations.
  • Notable Poets: Lucille Clifton.
39. Hybrid Poetic Forms
  • Features: Combines multiple forms such as free verse with haiku, sonnet with spoken word, etc.
  • Notable Poets: Claudia Rankine.
40. Cultural Memory Poetry
  • Features: Engages with ancestral memory and historical trauma within the African diaspora.
  • Notable Poets: Natasha Trethewey.
41. Jazz Poetry
  • Features: Poetry influenced by the rhythms and improvisations of jazz music.
  • Notable Poets: Langston Hughes, Ted Joans.
42. Slam Poetry
  • Features: Competitive performance poetry that addresses social, political, and personal issues.
  • Notable Poets: Patricia Smith.
43. Jali Poetry
  • Origin: West African tradition of oral poetry performed by griots or Jali (storytellers).
  • Notable Poets: Yusef Komunyakaa.
44. Diasporic Elegy
  • Features: Mourns the loss of culture, homeland, or community within the Black diaspora.
  • Notable Poets: Chris Abani.
45. Revolutionary Love Poetry
  • Features: Combines romantic love with revolutionary ideals, celebrating love as a political act.
  • Notable Poets: Nikki Giovanni.
46. Afropessimist Poetry
  • Features: Explores the inherent struggles of Blackness within oppressive systems, often reflecting on despair and resilience.
  • Notable Poets: Fred Moten.
47. Afrofeminist Poetry
  • Features: Poetry that emphasizes Black women’s liberation from both racial and gendered oppression.
  • Notable Poets: Audre Lorde, Ntozake Shange.
48. Hip-Hop Poetry
  • Features: Rooted in the lyrical and rhythmic traditions of hip-hop, addressing issues of race, poverty, and identity.
  • Notable Poets: Saul Williams.
49. Blues Sonnet
  • Features: A blending of the sonnet form with themes and rhythms of the blues.
  • Notable Poets: Langston Hughes, Cornelius Eady.
50. Africana Elegy
  • Features: A poem that mourns the losses within African and African-descended communities, invoking collective memory and cultural resilience.
  • Notable Poets: Warsan Shire.