Today’s post is brought to you by educator extraordinaire and guest author, Cait Hutsell. Cait is a high school ELA teacher in North Central Florida. She has almost exclusively taught freshmen for seven years, but has also taught AP Lang, Yearbook, and sophomore English as well. Her superpower is reading ridiculously fast; she finished 164 books in 2018! Cait is currently vacillating between Masters programs and is a mom of one four year old, with another coming soon. Cait is involved in and supports #TeachLivingPoets, #DisruptTexts, #educolor, #ProjectLitChat, and #ClearTheAir. You can follow her on Twitter at @caitteach and see her original tweet thread with these poems; you can also check out her blog at teachlikeasquirrel.com.
Click here for a video playlist to celebrate Black poets.
“Southern Gothic” by Rickey Laurentiis (poem link) @rckylrnts
Source: Poetry (November 2012)
“Letter to five of the presidents who owned slaves while they were in office” by Clint Smith @ClintSmithIII
“where you are planted” by Evie Shockley (link)
Evie Shockley, “where you are planted” from the new black. Wesleyan University Press. 2001.
“Sonnet” by James Weldon Johnson (link)
“Sonnet” from James Weldon Johnson: Complete Poems, edited by Sondra Kathryn Wilson, Literary Executor of the Estate of James Weldon Johnson. Penguin Group USA, 2000.
“Black Girl Magic” by Mahogany L. Browne @mobrowne
“Nina’s Blues” by Cornelius Eady (link)
Cornelius Eady, “Nina’s Blues,” from Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems, published by Putnam. Copyright 2008
“Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou, read by Serena Williams
“For Trayvon Martin” by Reuben Jackson (link)
Copyright © 2015 by Reuben Jackson, on Academy of American Poets (Poets.org)
“Coal” by Audre Lorde (link)
Audre Lorde, “Coal” from The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde. Copyright © 1997. Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency and W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., http://www.nortonpoets.com.
“BLK History Month” by Nikki Giovanni (link)
Nikki Giovanni, “BLK History Month” from Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea. Copyright © 2002 HarperCollins Publishers Inc..
“History Lesson” by Natasha Trethewey @NTrethewey (link)
atasha Trethewey, “History Lesson” from Domestic Work. Copyright © 2000, Graywolf Press
“Knock, knock” by Daniel Beaty (website)
“Eddie Priest’s Barbershop and Notary” by Kevin Young @Deardarkness (link)
Young, Kevin. “Eddie Priest’s Barbershop & Notary.” Most Way Home, Zoland Books, an imprint of Steerforth Press. Copyright © 1995
“truth” by Gwendolyn Brooks (link)
Gwendolyn Brooks, “truth” from Blacks. Third World Press, 1987
“For the Boys at the Bottom of the Sea” by Clint Smith
@ClintSmithIII (link)
Clint Smith, from Counting Descent, Write Bloody Publishing, 2016.
“Beloved” by Elizabeth Acevedo @AcevedoWrites
Elizabeth Acevedo, from Beastgirl & Other Origin Myths, YesYes Books, 2016.
“dream where every black person is standing by the ocean” by Danez Smith @Danez_Smif
Danez Smith, from Don’t Call Us Dead, Graywolf Press, 2017.
“I saw Emmett Till this week at a grocery store” by Eve L. Ewing
@eveewing (link)
“Black Laws” by Roger Reeves (link)
“Say My Name” by Idris Goodwin @idrisgoodwin
“Virginia is for Lovers” by @Nic_Sealey Nicole Sealey (link)
Nicole Sealey, from Ordinary Beast, Harper Collins, 2017. Published in The American Poetry Review Volume 43, No 5.
“Self Portrait with a Yellow Dress” by Safia Elhillo @mafiasafia
Safia Elhillo, from The January Children, University of Nebraska Press, 2017.
“LAWS WITHOUT MORALS ARE USELESS” by Cortney Lamar Charleston (link) @bardsbesidebars
Cortney Lamar Charleston, in Drunk in a Midnight Choir Journal (Nov 2018) – Issue #4
“To the woman I saw today who wept in her car” by Bianca Lynne Spriggs (link) @biancalynne
Bianca Lynne Spriggs, on the Split This Rock Poetry Database, added on Oct 2, 2018
“Hair” by Elizabeth Acevedo @AcevedeoWrites
“Prayer Serving the Cycle” by Donte Collins @donte_thepoet
Copyright © 2019 by Donte Collins. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 8, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
Camille Dungy “Frequently Asked Questions #7” (link)
Camille T Dungy. On the Split This Rock Poetry Database, added: Friday, January 12, 2018 / From “Trophic Cascade” (Wesleyan University Press, 2017).
“Call and Response” by Kyle Dargan @Free_KGD
“Canary” by Rita Dove
Jacqueline Woodson @JackieWoodson “February 12, 1963” (from BROWN GIRL DREAMING) (link)
Jacqueline Woodson, “February 12, 1963” from Brown Girl Dreaming. Penguin, 2014.
“Awaking in New York” by Maya Angelou
Hanif Abdurraqib’s “If Life Is As Short As Our Ancestors Insist It Is, Why Isn’t Everything I Want Already At My Feet” (link)
@NifMuhammad
Hanif Abdurraqib, in Narrative Northeast.
Click here for a video playlist (30+ videos!) to celebrate Black poets.
Thank you Cait for curating all of these amazing poems to honor Black History Month! What a phenomenal collection of poems. Cait and I would argue that these poems really should be taught ALL YEAR as they are all literary works of merit worthy of reading and studying in any English classroom. February offers educators an extra opportunity to honor Black history and Black writers, and to take a close look at our curriculum to make sure the voices of Black artists are not only present in February, but celebrated throughout the year.
Thank you for reading! Please comment with more of your favorite poems to add to the list!
#TeachLivingPoets 
“This is Not a Small Voice” Sonia Sanchez
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