The Poet Gwendolyn Brooks
Gwendolyn Brooks, on her full name Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was born in 1917 and she was an important American poet. Her merits in poetry were acknowledged in 1968 when she was appointed the Poet Laureate of Illinois and once again in 1985 when she was appointed as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Her place of birth is Topeka, Kansas and she was the girl child of a former school teacher and the son of a runaway slave who worked as a janitor, although would have wished to go to medical school but could not afford it. The family of Gwendolyn Brooks moved to Chicago only when she was few weeks old so she grew up there. She was called Gwedie, especially by her close friends.
Poet Gwendolyn Brooks was an African American and in the early 20th century and this meant that although she had a stable and loving family home, she often had to deal with racism, both in the neighborhood and at school. She went to the leading high school in the city, where almost only white people would go, Hyde Park High School but she transferred to an all black school later on. She graduated in 1936 and she had in the meanwhile grown her passion for writing and reading with the support of her family.
The first ever published poem of Gwendolyn Brooks was published when she was thirteen, in a children’s magazine. By the age of 16 she had already had a portfolio of about 75 already published works. When she was 17 she started to publish her work in the Chicago Defender, particularly in the poetry column called ‘Lights and Shadows’. Starting with 1941 she participated at various poetry workshops. It was during one of these workshops, the one organized by Stark, that the work of Gwendolyn Brooks started being appreciated at its true value. Two years later she received her first award for poetry from the Midwestern Writers’ Conference.