'I Have a Right to be Angry:' #BlackPoetsSpeakOut at Mashable

Black poets are speaking out! In response to the killing of unarmed African-American men like 18- year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri earlier this year, poets from the esteemed African-American literary arts organization, Cave Canem, are making their voices heard on the web. From Mashable:

"I am a black poet who will not remain silent while this nation murders black people. I have a right to be angry."

Hundreds of black poets across the U.S. have read these words in videos, written them in blog posts and recorded them on audio before they showcase a poem to assert that black lives matter.

The movement, called Black Poets Speak Out, is a response to the Aug. 9 killing of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the St. Louis County grand jury's decision not to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot him. It has since grown to respond to the killings of Eric Garner in Staten Island, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, and many others before and after them. It's part of a larger swell of poetry used as protest, solidarity and mourning across the country.

The idea for Black Poets Speak Out began on Facebook with five poets associated with Cave Canem, the prestigious organization for African-American poets founded in 1996.

After the grand jury declined to indict Wilson on Nov. 24, poet Amanda Johnston posed a question in the Cave Canem fellows Facebook group: How are we going to respond?

Fellow poets Jonterri Gadson, Mahogany Browne, Jericho Brown and Sherina Rodriguez-Sharpe jumped in, eventually coming up with the idea to post videos of them reading poetry. They became organizers of this new movement.

"We just wanted to have a collective response ... to show that Cave Canem poets weren't being silent," Gadson tells Mashable.

The hashtag #BlackPoetsSpeakOut began to spread, accompanying posts on Twitter, Facebook and in submissions to the official Tumblr. Gadson started a YouTube playlist, and the scholar Howard Rambsy began cataloging the videos on his site, Cultural Front. VONA, a workshop for writers of color, also started cataloging the videos.

"It took off. I think within 24 hours there were 50 videos, and we're up to over 200 now, just over a week of people recording the videos," Gadson says. [...]

Learn more at Mashable.