The golden shovel is a contemporary poetic form that follows a set of rules invented by the acclaimed poet Terrance Hayes in homage to Gwendolyn Brooks, the former poet laureate and the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize. When Mr. Hayes created his poem, “The Golden Shovel,” originally published in his 2010 collection “Lighthead,” it was inspired by Brooks’s classic, and the name of his form came from her poem’s epigraph, “The Pool Players./Seven at the Golden Shovel.” Mr. Hayes’s created his poetic form in honor of a poet he deeply respects, and also in honor of something he does in many of his poems, play.

​

Poetry is very much about play. That is the joy of writing a poem and of being a poet. As Brooks herself once said: “Words can do wonderful things. They pound, purr. They can urge, they can wheedle, whip, whine. They can sing, sass, singe.”

​

Poets are always celebrating one another, as all poems are really inspired by other poems. You are going to do the same thing: Use what has come before you as inspiration to create your own golden shovel. In doing so, you too, are honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, one line at a time.

​

So, what exactly is the golden shovel?

​

It’s a poem that takes a line from another poem or text (often a Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem, but not always) and uses each word in that line as the end of a line in the poem. For this poem, you will be using a headline from the newspaper as your line.

​

In honor of this poetic form, think about focusing your poem on the notion of “celebration” or “honor.” What do you celebrate in your life? What do you honor?