Read by Darrell Joe, Laurel Lefkow & Trei House (Unabridged: 3hrs 54mins)

Featuring poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar, Claude Mckay, Georges Moses Horton, Angelina Weld Grimke, Georgia Douglas Johnson & others. 

This anthology focuses on African-American poets.  We start in the 18th century and end with the Harlem Renaissance.  Many poets featured are, and were, rarely heard and have been painfully neglected.  To be of colour was deemed at best to be second class so few of our poets had the privileges most of us take for granted or a means to market. Down the ages they illuminate the stain on our humanity and its ever-repeating cycle.

Over ages, eons and countless generations humanity has sought to better itself.  Ideas and cultures have sprung forth creating fertile conditions for change and advancement.  We have gathered together as families, clans, tribes and nations in the clear knowledge that together more can be achieved for the individual.  New systems have evolved, waxed and waned, been replaced or discarded by bright shiny new ones. 

From afar the chances of humanity bettering itself must seem promising.  But today's generations find themselves searching not only for answers from others but also from themselves, for solutions to turn a world where privilege, wealth and power reside with the few to be the right of the many.  These unequal times will not give way easily. Entrenched interests will promise change and deliver little.  This is the real history of the human race.  We will claim that education, health care and jobs are for everyone and yet continue to mis-educate, to ignore primary care and offer jobs that even a robot would think twice about.

Those oppressed by race, creed, gender or colour will find the invisible walls of the status quo difficult to overcome. But there is hope - if we collectively want action.  When we don’t merely call for that change but when we demand that change from ourselves, and from society.  When we charge our political leaders to serve our interests rather than their own.

We may be created equal but society, and ourselves, sort, layer and assemble us all into groups, those it can keep underfoot and those who will have an unequal share. Real change requires all of us to change, to recognise that equal opportunity starts from equal access to resources. We need to praise ourselves less and provoke ourselves to do more, together.  If the pain is shared the rewards can be shared.

This volume does not dwell only on equality but covers a very wide range of subjects from recognised masters of the craft such as Paul Laurence Dunbar and Phyllis Wheatley to lesser known poets like Mary E Tucker and Charles Lewis Reason.

The reality is that we are more interested in changing our phones than changing our attitudes and the real changes that will bring.  Both can be done in an instant. In an era of disposable everything we stick rigidly to keeping what we have and yet, bleat that oppression is wrong.  Fair-weather activists. The news cycle will pass.  So does the moment…..until the next time.

In this collection of poems poets down the ages illuminate the stain on our humanity and its ever-repeating cycle. They call and illustrate the need for change. 

It's an enduring problem that seeks sensible and enduring solutions. 

If it be our will both we and society can change.

They call and illustrate the need for change. 

 In this compilation -