Award-winning Poet, Former Teacher, Returns to Speak to Students

What’s the difference between Black History (capital H) and Black history (lowercase h)? To former SCH English teacher and poet Iain Haley Pollock, it's not a mere difference in grammar.

“Capital ‘H’ Black History can seem distant, like it’s not for you or about you,” he said to students at SCH last week as part of the school’s Black History Month celebration. “The beauty of small ‘h’ Black history is that it’s all around you, happening now, and now again. You have a role as the Black present unfolds into Black History.”

The author of two poetry collections, Ghost, Like a Place, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and Spit Back a Boy, winner of the 2010 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, spoke to Middle and Upper School students about their place in history and shared his own experiences. He read several of his poems as a way to convey some of his own (“small ‘h’”) Black history.
In Upper School, several BSU leaders conducted a panel discussion with Pollock after his reading. He challenged students to think about how they want their voices to be heard but also to realize that "empowerment is listening, allyship is listening."