Get Lit Rising: Words Ignite. Claim Your Poem. Claim Your Life.

Personal essays and poems from 19 teenage poets, members of a poetry troupe connected with the Get Lit–Words Ignite literacy organization, are featured in this moving anthology. The young poets discuss their lives in candid essays and identify classic poems (from the likes of Charles Bukowski, Langston Hughes, and Marge Piercy) that they have found inspiring. The poets then follow the poems they have selected with their own “response” poems, which frequently touch on gender identity, mental health, body image, and violence. After each entry, Lane, who founded Get Lit, provides questions for readers to consider and prompts to jump-start their writing (“Write about a fight you’re fighting within yourself”). Lane and her young collaborators present an inspiring example of how poetry in the present communicates with that of the past. Ages 12–up. (Oct.)