Post-millennial Black American Experience: The Poetry of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement

Abstract

One of the most exciting developments on the Black American literary scene in the post-millennial period is the emergence of a body of #BlackLivesMatter poetry, itself a cultural extension of the civil rights movement of the same name. Granted that the #BlackLivesMovement in its current form is less than a decade old, what follows are but preliminary thoughts on the poetics of this movement. Often experimental, the poetry of the #BlackLivesMatter movement is, for the most part, conceived as one of the polyphonic voices of the black civil rights struggle in its contemporary form. The poetry—often not published in traditional book form—is, I argue, one that is still searching for its own distinctive voice or, more accurately, voices while simultaneously celebrating its very experimental selves. And yet this is unapologetically in-your-face art with a powerful digital presence on increasingly important social mass media portals such as Twitter, blogs, Facebook and especially YouTube. Where traditional published poetry requires the committed reader to seek out the book, #BlackLivesMatter poetry finds the reader and audience on social media.