Poetry Anthologies for Teens (Crowd-Sourced)

Poetry Anthologies for Teens (Crowd-Sourced)

National Poetry Month is around the corner. Yes, I am looking forward to spring for the warmth of the sun but, even more so, for the warm of writing poetry with teacher-friends-poets.

Still, I am on a mission to get poetry anthologies into secondary classrooms all year long. I imagine a classroom with students holding poetry anthologies in their hands with a notebook open on their desks, waiting for their verse to emerge.

And part of that mission is to get poetry anthologies into the hands of teachers so that they know the experience of filling a notebook with their own poems, so on Ethical ELA and in my courses at Oklahoma State University, I am filling spaces with poetry books.

Yes, indeed, I love the poetry online (the next Open Write is February 19th), but when we are alongside our students, handing a book to a poet is incredibly powerful: “Have you read Zetta? No, well, let me introduce you to Say Her Name. (The book passes from my hands to theirs.)” The number of times I’ve moved through this moment with a student is beyond measurement because the conversations and poetry that blossomed from who I affectionately name my co-teachers (anthology poets) change lives.

This post, then, is a call to Ethical ELA friends to populate the comments below with anthologies you’ve shared or ought to be shared with secondary teachers and students.

Here are a few to get us started:

Poetry Anthologies	Poets
Crush love	Alexander, Kwame
Depression & other magic tricks	Benaim, Sophia
Woke	Browyne, Mahogany
Thanku: Poems of gratitude	Bruchac, Joseph
Rhyme and Rhythm: Poems for student athletes	Donovan, Sarah
Say her name	Elliott, Zetta
Dreams of many rivers: a Hispanic history of the United States in Poems	Engle, Margarita
Helium	Francisco, Rudy
Call us what we carry	Gorman, Amanda
Legacy: Women poets of the Harlem Renaissance	Grimes, Nikki
One last word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance	Grimes, Nikki
Preposterous : poems of youth	Janeczko, Paul B.
Poetry out loud	Jordan, June
Honeybee	Nye, Naomi Shihab
Night is gone, day is still coming : stories and poems by American Indian teens and young adults	Ochoa, Annette
Wet cement: a mix of concrete poems	Raczka, Bob
Ain’t burned all the bright	Reynolds, Jason
Somebody give this girl a pen	Thakur, Sophia
Poetry speaks who I am
APA