One of our key roles, as a library, is to enable access to information. We stock a wide range of materials, do not censor published content, promote understanding and provide good quality information that helps people educate and inform themselves.
To challenge prejudice and discrimination we will be celebrating black authors, diversity and cultural role models with selections of good books – all of which can be found on our shelves. This includes fictional and factual titles for all ages in different blogs, and in our fourth blog we’re looking at some amazing poetry collections.
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
Aristotle
All these incredible works are available on our shelves as physical books or through BorrowBox as an eBook or an eAudiobook. If any of these collections intrigue you, simply click the book cover and you will be taken to our online catalogue where you can read more about the book and even reserve a physical copy for a small charge.
If you are unable to come and browse the shelves in person, and prefer to read physical books, you can request poetry books by black authors through our Ready Reads book collection service, through which our staff will put together a bag of books for you to collect.
Poetry explores experiences and emotions to create literature through language, arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. The words flows with the way they are arranged, cutting and moving as the poem continues, painting a picture with the stream of emotions, leaving the reader filled with thoughts. Poetry paints a picture, a critique or emotion, of the world or person who wrote it. It’s an extract of the poet’s soul, put into words and shared with the reader. It’s an experience to read and explore, one which can leave the reader both exhausted and exuberant.
These are 36 incredible poetry collections, handpicked by our staff, and we can not recommend them enough. These are books that will stay with you, will make you laugh and cry, will make you think, will make you experience the emotions and soul of the writer.
I want to write so that the reader … can say, ‘You know, that’s the truth. I wasn’t there, and I wasn’t a six-foot black girl, but that’s the truth.’
Maya Angelou
If you missed our first three blogs, you can find them here with:
Contemporary Adult Fiction
Adult Non-Fiction Titles
Children’s Titles
Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.
Khalil Gibran
Hampshire Libraries 