07/20/2026
This week's poet guide is Sonia Sanchez, poet, activist, and scholar from Birmingham, AL.
By the age of 5, Sonia Sanchez experienced first the passing of her mother and then her grandmother. In her grief, she developed a stutter and turned inward, immersing herself in reading and language—further sowing the seeds for her future as a poet. Reflecting on this period, Sanchez explains, “My stutter made me a loner. And it made people ignore me. I have always been a loner. I basically stopped stuttering by the time I was in high school. Stutters are still at the base of my skull waiting to escape, waiting to catch you, but I don’t let them. I think my stutter was a form of protection that my grandmother gave to me when she died. She knew a child like me who liked to read, talk and hug and run with the wind the way I did, and stay and hide my poems, would need protection. She gave me something special.”
Sonia Sanchez draws deeply on Black oral traditions, skillfully mixing blues bars with traditional Japanese forms like haiku and tanka. She's known to bring jazz musicians, drummers, and other musical guests on stage to aid and elevate her performances.
Sanchez weaves her activism directly into her literary work. She writes poetry that confronts racism, critiques sexism within the Black community, and celebrates Black pride and power—especially in educational spaces. Beyond poetry, she has established herself as a playwright and children’s book author, using every form of writing as a tool for liberation.
Sanchez continues to shape culture and community far beyond the written word. In 2011, she became Philadelphia’s first Poet Laureate, using the role to elevate poetry as a force for civic engagement. Her dynamic readings and public talks serve to ignite creativity and courage in new generations of writers, thinkers, and activists.
In a 2014 TEDx Talk, she explored what it means to be human through poetry and personal reflection. She closes with a powerful call to action:
“Women and men sowing themselves onto the sleeves of change and beauty and activism and change and love and peace and peace and peace . . . it’ll get better, it’ll get better because of you."
