Some of his poems use Punjabi-inflected English, and allude to earlier poets such as D.

The British poet Daljit Nagra (born 1966) was the first poet to win the Forward Prize for both his first collection of poetry, published by Faber in 2007, and for its title poem, ‘Look, We Have Coming to Dover!’

Daljit Nagra, ‘ Booking Khan Singh Kumar’. The poem is also a variation on the dramatic monologue, spoken by a young man of mixed race who is talking to a woman he finds attractive.ĩ. ‘Skins’ is a sestina, moving away from the unspoken tradition of writing such a poem in iambic pentameter and instead using a mixture of longer and shorter lines. ‘Skins’ is a fine example of her engagement with this topic.Īlthough Agbabi’s work lends itself to spoken-word performances, this does not mean she doesn’t also do fascinating things with the poem on the page. This poem from the 1990s details the speaker’s involvement in a ‘racism workshop’, designed to highlight systemic prejudice against people of colour (in the United States specifically, here), and how a world-weariness attends such attempts to educate white Americans about the experiences of black people – although the end of the poem suggests that Chrystos, or at least the speaker of her poem, is still committed to the task of changing people’s minds and challenging their attitudes.Īgbabi (born 1965) is a British poet who often addresses important social themes, including race and racial identity. Chrystos, ‘ Into the Racism Workshop’.Ĭhrystos is a Menominee writer and activist whose work often focuses on indigenous Americans’ civil rights, as well as feminism.

The poem addresses the hardship faced by many black women in the US but also reiterates a message of hope, ending with the positive words, ‘Let us begin’.ħ. Lorde, one of the finest African-American poets of the twentieth century, takes in the difference between poetry and rhetoric as she responds to the upsetting realities of life in contemporary America, including racial prejudice.Īlthough she is probably best-known for her novel The Color Purple, Alice Walker (born 1944) is also a poet, who writes powerfully in this poem about being the woman with ‘the dark skin’.

Gwendolyn brooks about racism