Title: 7 Powerful Poems About Injustice & Racial Discrimination | Hive Life
Headings: 7 Powerful Poems About Injustice & Racial Discrimination
7 Powerful Poems About Injustice & Racial Discrimination
You’re Not Black – Amy Saunders
I, Too (1926) – Langston Hughes
Immigrant Blues – Li-Young Lee
Home – Warsan Shire
Caged Bird (1983) – Maya Angelou
After Zuko (2019) – Dave Harris
Rosa (1998) – Rita Dove
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Content: Awarded the inaugural Brunel University African Poetry Prize in 2013, Shire is a woman of colour who was born to Somali parents and raised in London. Her work often connects the complicated intricacies of race, culture and war as she strives to depict the displacement that numerous people of colour have to live with. Caged Bird (1983) – Maya Angelou
A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky. But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing. The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom. The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing. The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings