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Gwendolyn Brooks: A Chicago Legacy

A collection on the work and impact of a legendary poet
Black and white illustration of the poet Gwendolyn Brooks.
Tyrue "Slang" Jones, “Through the Words of Miss Brooks,” 2017.

Gwendolyn Brooks, the first Black winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a social justice champion, is the unofficial eternal poet laureate of Chicago. As one of the most popular and widely-read poets of her generation and of Chicago's history, Brooks has influenced countless writers, readers, and activists since publishing her first poem at the age of 13. Brooks was a community poet who left major publishing houses in order to work and publish with smaller Black-led presses, including Chicago's Third World Press and Broadside Press. The books published with these presses, including Blacks (1987), which spans more than 30 years of Brooks's work and features the title poem from her 1950 Pulitzer Prize–winning Annie Allen, form the backbone of Brooks's lasting legacy and demonstrate her stated commitment to "poems that will be non-compromising."

The Poetry Foundation compiled this selection of online resources in celebration of Brooks and of the 2023 program One Poem, One Chicago, a collaboration with the Chicago Public Library, Third World Press, Brooks Permissions, and Northwestern University Press.

Essential Resources and One Poem, One Chicago
Poems, Guides, and Educational Resources
Videos and No Blue Memories

No Blue Memories is a uniquely staged retelling of Brooks’s life using simple, illuminative, paper-cut puppetry by Manual Cinema. Written by Chicago poets Eve L. Ewing and Nate Marshall, the performance features music composed by Jamila Woods and Ayanna Woods.

From the 2017 centennial celebration of Gwendolyn Brooks

Best known for her shorter lyrics, such as “We Real Cool”—a poem that first appeared in Poetry magazine in 1959—Brooks produced a prolific body of work in her lifetime, ranging from meditations on mass riots to experimental fiction. The following articles, poems, and audio resources commemorate the centenary of one of the most beloved and respected United States poets.

Tributes to Gwendolyn Brooks
On Golden Shovels

Terrance Hayes famously developed a new poetic form as an excavation of Gwendolyn Brooks's "We Real Cool" and called it the Golden Shovel. Read from 2016's Poetry folio on the form alongside newer examples.

Audio and Podcasts
Prose on Brooks
Other Resources