By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Maya Angelou (1928-2014) was not just a poet, of course: she was an influential civil rights campaigner in the United States, and her autobiography, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, is a classic of the genre. But several of her poems are well-known, and she was popular as a poet during her lifetime and a couple of the poems that follow, at the very least, remain famous.