"To take my freedom is to take my breath": Lillian Myricks and Young Black Poets' Poetics of Freedom

Abstract

In this essay, I explore how young African American poets shaped visions of and possibilities for Black liberation by focusing primarily on the invocation of freedom crafted by one young poet, Lillian Myricks, whose poem "Freedom" was entered in a poetry contest sponsored by poet Gwendolyn Brooks in the early 1960s. Along with discussion of Brooks's advocacy for young poets, I read Myricks's poem alongside a poem by Wanda McGee, also from the early 1960s, in an effort to center the agency and authorship of these young Black poets for their contributions to crafting a poetics of freedom.