By Cynthia Amoah, Member, Poets Against Racism & Hate USA “If you’re going to enter into the gate, you have to do so in my language.” — Toni Morrison That idea stayed with me throughout Literary Cleveland’s 2026 Inkubator Writing Conference. As writers, we are often taught to think about our readers: Will they understand

One purpose of the PARH USA blog is to examine form and other poetic devices as they relate to social justice poetry and then provide associated writing prompts. In this post, we discuss the golden shovel form. The golden shovel form was devised by Terrance Hayes to honor Gwendolyn Brooks. Writing a golden shovel involves

Near the end of last year, we published a blog post in which we referenced an “alphabet of resistance.” This word list was created by the editors of Coda: Community Writing + Creative Work, a special section included in select issues of Community Literacy Journal. With their “alphabet of resistance,” the Coda editors identified terms