Black poetry has never just been about rhyme.

It has been testimony.
It has been mourning.
It has been praise.
It has been protest.
It has been prophecy.
It has been healing.

Long before National Poetry Month had a name, Black people were using language as a place to hold what the world tried to take away: history, spirit, tenderness, grief, humor, defiance, and imagination. 

Poetry has always been one of the freest ways we have had to speak plainly and beautifully at the same time. It lives in our souls, in church pews, in jazz clubs, on protest signs, in love letters, in ciphers, in family sayings…everywhere.

That is part of why poetry endures for Black people. It has always known how to survive. In the hands of Black writers, poetry becomes a vessel for all the things that are too layered, too charged, too intimate, or too expansive for ordinary explanation. It can be intimate and communal simultaneously. It can name pain without surrendering to it. It can call out injustice while still making room for beauty. It can remember the past while insisting on the future.

And right now, a powerful generation of contemporary Black poets is carrying that tradition forward with force, range, and style. That is why BET.com is proud to share “Still We Write,” a National Poetry Month series dedicated to the Black poets shaping the next chapter of the art form. Every week, we will feature a poet, share their work, and dive into the ideas, influences, and lived experiences that shape their writing. The goal is to celebrate Black poetry as something that lives and is always becoming.

“Still We Write” will spotlight the uncompromising brilliance of Tongo Eisen-Martin, whose writing is urgent and beautiful. You will meet aja monet, whose words cut like glass and heal like medicine; Jaha Zainabu, whose voice speaks with depth, imagination, and an attention to the sacred; Moor Mother, whose work blurs the line between poetry, music, history, and theory, turning sound and text into a living archive; Keyaira Kelly, whose work brings fresh vision and emotional clarity; Dr. Mahogany L. Browne, whose poems carry warmth, intellect, and cultural memory; and Karisma Price, whose writing gives language to Black womanhood, intimacy and self-invention in ways that feel both deeply personal and widely resonant.

So, get ready and happy National Poetry Month!