By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Still I Rise’ is one of Maya Angelou’s best-loved and most widely studied poems. It’s an affirmative poem about the power of the self, as well as a poem which celebrates the speaker’s strength and her ability to overcome the prejudices and setbacks she has experienced in her life.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Caged Bird’ is a 1983 poem by the African-American poet and memoirist Maya Angelou (1928-2014). The poem originally appeared in Angelou’s collection Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing? The poem uses the image of a caged bird to explore issues of confinement, oppression, and restriction.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Phenomenal Woman’ is a 1994 poem by the American poet Maya Angelou (1928-2014). Angelou was a singer, dancer, composer, actor, teacher, memoirist, and poet: a woman of many talents. She was also a key voice in the American civil rights movement. Much of her work is about striving to succeed, even in the face of adversity, and ‘Phenomenal Woman’ is a good example of this.
‘Life Doesn’t Frighten Me’ is a well-known poem by Maya Angelou (1928-2014). It is the title poem from Angelou’s 1993 collection Life Doesn’t Frighten Me, which was marketed as a children’s book although Angelou did not originally conceive the poems as being specifically for children.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Still I Rise’ is a poem by the American poet Maya Angelou (1928-2014), published in her 1978 collection And Still I Rise. A kind of protest poem which is defiant as well as celebratory, ‘Still I Rise’ is about the power of the human spirit to overcome discrimination and hardship, with Angelou specifically reflecting her attitudes as a black American woman.