Youth Poets in Children's Literature, Media, and Performance

Amanda Gorman, the first National Youth Poet Laureate and the youngest inaugural poet in US history, captivated millions during her performance at Joseph R. Biden's presidential inauguration in January of 2021. Her performance serves as a reminder that poetry by young people has the power to transform our national thinking and inspire social change. From award-winning works like Jacqueline Woodson's memoir in verse Brown Girl Dreaming and Elizabeth Acevedo's verse novel The Poet X that depict young poets coming of age and beginning to hone their craft, to the hundreds of young people who participate each year in youth slam poetry, children's literature and culture are filled with youth who choose poetry as their mode of expression.

This special issue examines the relationships, both contemporary and historical, between youth and poetry. Exploring poetry written and performed by, for, or about youth, the articles featured in this issue present a wide range of young poets writing about social justice through topics including race, gender, immigration, and sexual assault. Whether discussing the poetics of freedom developed by young Black poets of the 1960s or the limiting nature of the discourse surrounding the DREAM Act as expressed by a young slam poet in 2012, the scholars included here treat the writing and performances of youth poets as valuable and worthwhile contributions deserving of close reading and critical analysis.

This issue opens with Rachel Conrad's "'To take my freedom is to take my breath': Lillian Myricks and Young Black Poets' Poetics of Freedom," an examination of archival poetry written by two young Black poets from the early 1960s, Lillian Myricks and Wanda McGee. Works by both of these young poets from the same elementary school classroom were preserved in Gwendolyn Brooks's personal papers, emphasizing her advocacy and admiration for youth poetry. By looking closely at Myrick's "Freedom" and McGee's "We Are Wondering," Conrad contends that young poets writing in the wake of the Civil Rights movement "demonstrate their capacity and power as creative and historical agents" and proclaim their poetics of freedom.

While Conrad explores young poets of the past, Tehmina Pirzada examines the impact of a contemporary young poet in "The Many Malalas: Self-Narrativization and the Construction of Mythology through Poetry." She argues that Malala Yousafzai's auto/biographical poetic performances are central to her activism and encourage "other poets and artists to participate in the narrativization of Malala's story and, in the process, relate her struggle to their personal experiences." Pirzada explores both the way that Malala uses her poetic performances to construct her identity and her use of Pashtun mythology of powerful young women, as well as the way that other poets writing poems for Malala magnify her narrative and emphasize community.

Amanda Fields's "The Tucson Youth Poetry Slam: An Analysis of Discourse by and about Youth Performance" continues Pirzada's discussion of poetic performance through her analysis of poetry written by and interviews conducted with young slam poets between 2011 and 2014 about "how the poets perceived the practice and significance of slam at a time of particularly regressive legislation in Arizona." In her interviews with and analysis of poetic performances of young slam participants, poetry is posited as a way to bring about social change, as well as a vehicle for asserting agency. Fields contends that, for these young poets participating in the Tucson Youth Poetry Slam, slam provides a gateway to growth and leadership.

The final essay in this special issue, Amber Moore's "'They're all kinda dark …': Speak and Thirteen Reasons Why Fanfiction Poetry as Resistance to Rape Culture," examines poetry through participatory and intertextual fan writing. Moore's article analyzes fanfiction poetry written in response to Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak (1999) and Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why (2007) and considers how poetry as a form allows fanfiction poets to process young adult narratives featuring sexual violence. Through her analysis of over forty fanfiction poems, Moore argues that "fanfiction poems demonstrate how largely adolescent authors create space" and demonstrate "meaningful poetic witnessing" as "resistance to rape culture."

As these articles demonstrate, young poets have long been writing and their voices deserve recognition. The young poets featured and explored by the scholars in this special issue begin to answer the question of who gets to contribute to and shape children's literature, media, and culture. While many of these young poets' voices were first amplified by adults, ultimately these young writers and performers are able to claim agency through their use of poetry to express their thoughts, feelings, and unique ways of seeing the world.

Notes

I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the editors of Children's Literature Association Quarterly for their support in assembling this special issue and Jenn Tullos for her contribution to the initial stages of planning and preparation of the issue. I would also like to thank the authors whose work is contained within this issue for their contributions, as well as the many outside readers who provided their feedback.