Tag: poetry

Yecheilyah’s 7th Annual Poetry Contest 2024

It’s that time of the year, good people!

We are excited to announce that this year’s poetry contest will begin later this month and run through the end of the year.

This time, we will choose semi-finalists who will be highlighted on our social media. From those semi-finalists, we will choose three winners from the poets with the highest ratings by the judges.

It’s about to be a time!

The entry rules, guidelines, and list of prizes are now available on the website. (Remember, we have a website for the contests now!)

We are also doing something different: We are having the interview with the winners (semi-finalists and finalists) on Instagram Live! Words are too powerful to be limited to paper, especially when expressed in this medium. To quote Maya Angelou, Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.”

So that is what we will do!

I got my Sidney Shaw voice ready to ask, “When did you first fall in love with poetry?”

Here are the official dates:

Submissions Accepted:

October 21st – December 1st

Semi-finalists announced:

December 20th

Finalists Revealed:

January 1, 2025

Please Click this Link For the Entry Rules, Guidelines, and Prize List

If you would like to support our poets with a donation, you may do so by clicking on the website’s donation page here.

Please feel free to share the flyer with all your poet friends. Even if you don’t enter, someone else might want to!

Hope to see you soon!

Yecheilyah’s 1st Annual Poetry Contest Winners, 2017

Yecheilyah’s 2nd Annual Poetry Contest Winners, 2018

Yecheilyah’s 3rd Annual Poetry Contest Winners, 2019

Yecheilyah’s 4th Annual Poetry Contest Winners, 2021

Yecheilyah’s 5th Annual Poetry Contest Winners, 2022

Yecheilyah’s 6th Annual Poetry Contest Winners, 2023

More

Photo by Neon Joi

We have enough people who are beautiful.
We need more who are brave.
We have enough people who are popular.
We need more who are passionate and purposeful.
We have enough people who are wild.
We need more who are wise.
We have enough people who are famous.
We need more who are faithful.
We have enough people who require rewards.
We need more who require respect.
We have enough people who are too afraid to fail.
We need more who are courageous enough to fly.

You can listen to this poem on TikTok, and be sure to subscribe on YouTube!

Black Joy

Nobody talks about society’s addiction
to black trauma.
How much more profitable
it is to talk about pain
than poems,
depression
than joy.

Like we don’t have feelings
just bad experiences
turned into songs
of sorrows
and spirituals
of reaching heaven
cause there can’t be no freedom
here on Earth for Black people.

Maybe this world still doesn’t consider us
human enough
to be happy
someone hand society a roadmap
for getting to know black people.

Tell them they can find us laughing
even when life is lifeing
cracking jokes and turning sadness into praise.
Tell them we are not just guns and gangs.

Our hope does not hang on by string
on some cracked-out corner
or trap house
Tell them how we dream.
Big Mama musta had mustard seeds
underneath the mattress
cause she moved mountains.
Food and faith ain’t never been hard to find.
We gone eat.

Talk about our love
our sense of community
our building
our builders
our beauty.

We’ve had a wild ride here
in this country
But it was not all bad.

Together, we forged a world of our own
found solace in the cracks
made meals from scraps
and carved out our own sense of enjoyment and purpose.

Tell them about how the cells of a black woman
saved the world
and the genius of a Black man lit it up.
Talk about how we bless everything we touch.

Tell the whole truth
that we are not made up only of pain.

Joy lives here, too.

You can listen to this poem on TikTok and YouTube! I’m @yecheilyah on both.

Black History Facts is back! If you’ve been waiting for a signed copy, this is your chance to get your hands on it. We are back in stock. Go now to: https://www.blkhistorybook.com/.

To Be Human

Photo by TUBARONES PHOTOGRAPHY

I have learned not to neglect the physical

because I live on the physical.

How can I ignore the earth when I was born from it?

Not the first womb.

Not the first place my human self called home.

And I have learned not to neglect the spiritual

because it is higher than the physical.

It will help me to transcend the works of my flesh.

Both important.

Both necessary.

Neither forsaken.

Oh nothing, just getting back to my poetry.

One More Game

(AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

From my eighth-floor window
I could hear hope bounce back and forth
on concrete loitered with crack vials.

Dirt-caked Nikes were like hands
reaching for revolution
in the air.

It didn’t get them out of the projects,
but Jordan would have been proud
the way these boys balled.

It kept their bodies distracted from the hunger
of not eating for three days.
Here, many children raised themselves.
Forced to grow up without grownups.

It’s a strange thing not to have parents
strange the way these kids parented
themselves.

Adults in small bodies
swallowing their pride for one more game.

They might not eat today,
but boy, how they balled.

This was inspired by the real events of growing up in The Robert Taylor Projects as a kid in early 90s Chicago. Head over to my TikTok @yecheilyah to listen to the poem.

Our 6th Annual Poetry Contest is on the Way!

Stay Glued.

Our Children

You are fourteen,
and despite the childish laughter—
the one smoother than the fresh coat of love
on a baby’s skin—
your mothers must warn you
that certain skin tones
won’t allow you to flash open innocence.

You are not allowed to purchase candy,
tell jokes,
or ring the wrong doorbell.

Certain histories won’t let you forget the present
or permit childhood to take advantage
of your fingertips.

Responsibilities follow you home
in warm booties, blankets, and prophecies.
If you had known that your existence
would give birth to a movement,
long before your feet hit the ground.
Before your mother’s pelvis
danced against your father’s,
and his kiss brushed upon her skin…

Did they tell you that you were born for this?

Did they tell you about the cries of Israel
when they reached into the heavens like hands
just as heavy as your parent’s hearts,
knocking against the doors of heaven
because too many of their prayers ended in question marks?

Did they tell you that you were destined for this?

That you had the freedom movement
stamped to your backside
like a receipt back to the soil.

Like your fathers had to spit their seed into a melody,
an Amazing Grace and Birmingham Sunday,
carving its lyrics and your names
into the history books of our yet unborn.

And while you rest
they march scripture on the bed
of your misunderstood self.

Listen to this poem on TikTok or YouTube.