The Golden Shovel poetry is a poetic form, created by poet Terrance Hayes, that allows a writer to pay homage to an existing poem. The form follows a set of rules invented by Hayes in homage to Gwendolyn Brooks, the former poet laureate and the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize. Hayes published his poem “The Golden Shovel” in Lighthead, his National Book Award winning collection in 2010. The poem takes its form from the lines of Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool.”

Writing a Golden Shovel:

• Take a line (or lines) from a poem you admire.

• Use each word in the line (or lines) as an end word in your poem.

• Keep the end words in order.

• Give credit to the poet who originally wrote the line (or lines).

• The new poem does not have to be about the same subject as the poem that offers the end words.

If you pull a line with six words, your poem would be six lines long. If you pull a stanza with 24 words, your poem would be 24 lines long. 

Below is Hayes’ and Brooks’ poem:

We Real Cool, by Gwendolyn Brooks (original poem)

The Golden Shovel, by Terrance Hayes (golden shovel poem)