The University of Connecticut’s Honors 4 Diversity organization hosted a celebration for Black Poetry Day on Thursday at McHugh Hall.
Danielle Dei, a seventh-semester accounting student and the president of H4D, led the event. She said Black Poetry Day falls on Oct. 17 and is not a federally recognized holiday, but the celebration event happened on Thursday, Oct. 22 because it aligned with H4D’s biweekly meeting schedule.
“It’s important to know that Black Poetry Day is not a federally recognized holiday,” Dei said. “But it brings more importance to why we should celebrate it because there is actually a World Poetry Day. But Black poetry is not recognized, and we must question why.”
Dei began by explaining the significance of Oct. 17. She said it was the birthday of Jupiter Hammon in 1711, an enslaved man who is credited as the first African American poet to publish a piece of work in the U.S. His poem, “An Evening Thought,” was printed in Hartford in 1761.
The background was followed by an overview of oral storytelling and poetry. Dei connected this tradition of oral storytelling with her Ghanaian lineage, as her father and forefathers talked through cultural history.
“Poetry is a living language,” Dei said. “It’s not very stagnant or myopic; it’s very broad. There’s not one genre or single story that contains poetry; it’s many overlapping movements and languages.”
Dei spotlighted the most notable literary movements that were driven by or included Black poetry. She touched on abolitionist literature and the cultural boom of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. Soon after was the Négritude movement, which emerged from Francophone intellectual groups in the 1930s. She ended with the Black Arts movement of the 1960s, where she said poetry became a “political force.”
After the history highlights, Ariyana Stitchell, a seventh-semester psychology student, read her poem “Everywhere.” She said it was her first time reading her poetry to an audience.
“I was kind of nervous to do it, but I still did it anyway, so I was happy I did it,” Stitchell said.
Stitchell said she has been writing poetry in her free time for a few years, and she wrote the poem she read in 2025.
“The poem is about the common experience of regretting past decisions you might’ve made or who you might’ve been in the past,” Stitchell said. “And it’s about reconciling with that version of yourself and understanding that you needed to be that version of yourself to become who you are now.”
Stitchell’s reading was followed by a presentation of poems by African American poets. Dei read Langston Hughes’ “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” which was published in 1921. Videos of Maya Angelou reading her poem “And Still I Rise” and Amanda Gorman reading her poem “The Hill We Climb” at President Joe Biden’s inauguration were shown afterward.
The presentation concluded with a performance piece by Guy Kelton Jones at “America’s Got Talent,” which blended spoken word poetic devices and music.
Dei then shared a writing exercise for attendees to experiment with so they could write their own poem.
After the event, Mya Matta-Paskell, a fifth-semester nursing student and vice president of H4D, said she wanted the celebration to be collaborative for students.
“Just overall, giving a space to other people so we can also have other peers come celebrate and bring up each other,” Paskell said.
Dei said she wanted the event to bring Black students on campus together.
“I feel like we’re just spread out everywhere,” Dei said. “There’s not really a space where everyone can just come be creative and not feel awkward about it, and be like, ‘they’re a nerd, they like poetry,’ I don’t want that. We want to cultivate that space.”
Dei emphasized that while the celebration focused on Black poetry, she wanted people of all backgrounds to feel welcome.
“I wanted it to be open to everyone, and everyone, anyone was here, and I really enjoyed that,” Dei said. “If there are events that are marketed toward Black people or focus on Black people, that doesn’t mean you’re not included in that. Don’t ever feel afraid to go to such events; you should be encouraged to go because that’s how you learn.”