This month is Women’s History Month, so through the end of March, I will share a daily female poet from history along with 2 poems they have written. While this is a fun way to celebrate women, I am also using it as an opportunity to educate myself more on the history and people of poetry. Even if poetry is a foreign language to you, this is also meant to be a way to learn history behind a form of art. So that’s 2 things you can get out of it – history and art! For day two, I chose Margaret Walker, who was both a poet and novelist. Her first collection of poetry, For My People won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, and her literary works were often based on her family history. The Poetry Foundation has an article full of historical information and inspiration for Walker. You can read it in full here. The first poem I chose for Walker is “For My People” and contains the powerful line "trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people, all the faces, all the Adams and Eves and their countless generations." You can read the poem here. The second poem is “The Struggle Staggers Us” and deals with putting down our own barriers to have empathy for those around us.
You can read it in full here. Photo from Poetry Foundation
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