Poetry highlights in honor of National Poetry Month!
Poet of the Day: Mahogany L. Browne
Mahogany L. Browne is a writer, organizer, and educator. She is also executive director of Bowery Poetry Club, artistic director of Urban Word NYC, and poetry coordinator at St. Francis College, and has received fellowships from Agnes Gund, Air Serenbe, Cave Canem, Poets House, Mellon Research, and Rauschenberg. She is the author of Woke: A Young Poet's Call to Justice, Woke Baby, and Black Girl Magic, and her newest book, Chlorine Sky, was praised by Elizabeth Acevedo as "an absolute masterpiece." Mahogany is completing her first book of essays and a book-length poem investigating mass incarceration and its impact on women and children. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Photo credit: Jennie Bergqvist
This poet belongs in our classrooms because . . .
The conversations about justice work, prison, and identity are necessary themes to study and unpack if we are to truly become global citizens. Mahogany Browne's voice aims to center the often erased and marginalized stories. Her poems ask hard questions that have no answers. She recognizes that the answers lie in the journey—the answers belong to the readers.
A Poem by Mahogany L. Browne
An Excerpt from "Litany"

today, i am a woman, a brown and black &
brew woman dreaming of freedom
today, i am a mother, & my country is burning
and i forget how to flee
from such a flamboyant backdraft
            —i’m too in awe of how beautiful i look
on fire
 
Copyright © 2016 by Mahogany Browne. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 25, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.

Read the full poem here.
Teaching Connections
Poems are always looking at what surrounds the citizen. The poem "Litany" serves as both a litany of loss and a rant centering on the beauty of survival.


More Poems by Mahogany L. Browne

 
 
 
Poetry Magazine Weekly Podcast for June 19, 2017: Mahogany L. Browne Reads Two Poems
Special Thanks to Today's Curator
Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz is an award-winning associate professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research focuses on racial literacy in teacher education, Black girl literacies, and Black and Latinx male high school students. A sought-after speaker on issues of race, culturally responsive pedagogy, and diversity, Yolanda works with K–12 and higher education school communities to increase their racial literacy knowledge and move toward more equitable school experiences for their Black and Latinx students. She appeared in Spike Lee’s 2 Fists Up: We Gon’ Be Alright, a documentary about the Black Lives Matter movement and the campus protests at Mizzou. Her coauthored book (with Detra Price-Dennis) Advancing Racial Literacies in Teacher Education: Toward Activism for Equity in Digital Spaces will be published in April 2021. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Love from the Vortex & Other Poems (Kalediscope Vibrations LLC) was published in March, 2020, and her sophomore book of poetry, The Peace Chronicles, will be released in Summer 2021.