Last week, we hosted a poetry assembly where several students and teachers performed original and favorite works. We interspersed videos to provide a more visual and aural experience, and I fell in love with this one that imagines the ideation of Gwendolyn Brooks’ famous poem “We Real Cool”, which is often taught in schools.

Then I went to my local independent bookstore Politics and Prose and found this gem, Legacy: Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance. I was moved by the fate of it all.

Nikki Grimes continues to be a prolific poetic genius. Her work is so accessible and perfect for sharing with young people. Here she has gathered a wonderful selection of undersung women poets of the Harlem Renaissance AND THEN she adds her own “golden shovel” poems in homage to each of them AND THEN there is beautiful artwork by the best Black women illustrators out there. I highly suggest you get a copy.

Here is a video of Nikki reading from another book of golden shovel poems One Last Word and talking about her process working with this form.

The Origin of Golden Shovel Poetry

How are the works of Brooks and Grimes connected? It is important to know that “We Real Cool” has an epigraph that reads “The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel.”

And that Terrance Hayes invented a new poetry form when he wrote his poem “The Golden Shovel” using the language of the original poem by Gwendolyn Brooks. Looking below, he ends each line with a word from Brooks poem.

Golden shovel poems help forge a deeper connection with favorite poets and serve as a gateway into experimentation with new styles and voices. Working with this form is a terrific task for both beginners and more advanced poets – the magic is in the collaboration and allowing your ideas to dance with those of someone else.

My Muse: Lucille Clifton

To wrap up poetry month, I wrote golden shovel poems with Lucille Clifton. There are lots of reasons to love Lucille Clifton. Mine are she was from Maryland, and she wrote short, powerful poems that are completely trimmed of any excess, which is something I aspire to improve about my poetry. I teach middle school grammar, so it is hard for me to trust that cutting out the little clarifying words we sprinkle throughout prose will leave the meaning intact. Clifton proves that it works.

I also appreciate that she was a writing mother. This Paris Review feature of Aracelis Girmay’s foreword to How To Carry Water released in 2020 revealed that she had 6 children under the age of 8 when she published her first book.

Her daughters say, “As children, we watched our mother type on her old-fashioned typewriter at the dining room table. For us, this is what mothers did; and where they did it; create worlds, play games, and share meals in the same place. Her creating space was her sanctuary, and ours. So it is with her every word.” Not that mothers need permission to create space for our art, but there it is anyway.

To create the poems, I used my copy of Blessing the Boats, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2000 and found lines that resonated with me. Here is a golden shovel poem inspired by Clifton’s poem of the same name.

The Times

After Lucille Clifton

We are trying to understand these times, these

days of war when so many sobbing beings are saying remember my child too.

We wonder about those who drop bombs and hold guns and are

trying to protect their children with war so we ask are your

children worth the trigger pull, are the bullets flying worth your children,

Are your children worth the high you get off conquest because this

is not the way towards peace, which would save your children too.

Why not lift our arms to create instead of destroy? What is

life after we have buried such precious detritus, once not your

child wrapped in cloth and lowered into the earth, now too your child?

More resources for golden shovel poetry

Writer’s Digest clear explanation

Try it with news articles lesson from NYT

Ready made lesson materials from master teacher Emily at Read It Write It Learn It as part of her New Year Poetry Analysis set

If you write a golden shovel poem, I’d love to read it!

News and Reviews

I will be doing my last DMV read aloud and art activity at People’s Book in Takoma Park on Sunday, May 5 at 9:30am. This event will wrap up an incredible year of promotion for A-Train Allen. It is a great opportunity to buy a copy if you haven’t and to get your copies signed. I’m bringing balloons and cupcakes. Come celebrate with me!