Gwendolyn Brooks

Arts & Ideas

Inner city life in Chicago's Bronzeville and the experiences of ordinary people inspired the first poetry collection published by Gwendolyn Brooks in 1945 and she followed this with a sequence of poems Annie Allen and a novella Maud Martha depicting Black women entering adulthood. Chicago based poet Peter Kahn, editor of an anthology of modern poets responding to the writing of Brooks, and poets Malika Booker and Keith Jarrett join Shahidha Bari to discuss the themes and textures in Gwendolyn Brooks' writing and what it means to write a Golden Shovel poem, whilst literature scholar Sarah Parker and pattern maker Gesa Werner talk about putting on an exhibition about fashion and poetry which features a poem by Brooks.

Producer: Robyn Read

Poets in Vogue curated by Sophie Oliver, Sarah Parker and Gesa Werner runs Feb 17th to June 25th 2023. It includes a skirt that belonged to Sylvia Plath, a reconstruction of Anne Sexton’s red ‘reading dress’, creative interpretations of Audre Lorde’s, Edith Sitwell’s and Stevie Smith’s signature looks, a fabric-adaptation of a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks and the clothes-performances of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Peter Kahn edited The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks. His own poetry collection Little Kings is published by Nine Arches Press.

In the Free Thinking archives you can find Noreen Masud on the aphorisms of Stevie Smith https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000srj1 A discussion Landmark: Audre Lorde hearing from her children, Jackie Kay and Selina Thompson https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004my0 and during February's Queer History month on BBC Sounds - a Words and Music episode celebrates Audre Lorde's writing https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000ql9k Sophie Oliver discusses Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000