When asked about her work, poet Gwendolyn Brooks once said: "I wrote about what I saw and heard in the street … There was my material."
What she saw and heard, as a black woman living on Chicago's South Side in the mid-20th century, were the myriad struggles — and joys — of urban black life, which she explored in more than 20 books of poetry, a novella, autobiography and other works.
It has been 100 years since Brooks was born, and events are planned this year across Illinois and Chicago to celebrate the centenary. Though she died in 2000, she remains one of the 20th century's most-read and honored poets, both for how deftly she put forward the issues of the day and for the grace of her craft and style. She was the first African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize, as well as the first to hold the role of poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, a position now known as Poet Laureate. In that role, and as a teacher, she worked to educate a generation of young black writers.
And yet, in 2017, some worry that Brooks is in danger of being set aside. "The Golden Shovel Anthology," a new book of poems honoring Brooks, seeks to make sure that doesn't happen. In the book's foreword, poet Terrance Hayes writes: "I have been, since her passing, returning to her work again and again with the feeling not enough of it has been made of it or her … Perhaps we can never say enough."

