Poems, poets, and poetry collections for when you need a boost
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;- from "If-," by Rudyard Kipling
Sometimes you just need a little pick me up, something a bit more than just another daily affirmation taped to your bathroom mirror. Sometimes you need a spark of motivation and inspiration that you feel deep down in your soul. Look no further than motivational poetry.
For those days when you feel at your lowest to the days when you need that extra kick in your step to keep moving forward, poetry is there. From reminders that you aren’t in this alone to words of wisdom for chasing your dreams, here are just a handful of poems and poets you can look to when you need them.
Motivational Poems
"Dreams," by Langston Hughes
A poem for when you need the motivation to keep chasing your dream.
The power of a dream is an important theme throughout the motivational poetry of Langston Hughes. He oftentimes encourages readers to keep a hold of their dreams, especially during the difficult times. He reminds readers that you need to hold fast to your aspirations, goals, ambitions, and keep going because a life without a dream is painful and barren.
"I Have This Way of Being," by Jamaal May
A poem to remember you are always growing.
“I think the closest anyone could get to an honest answer about who they are is a metaphor that shifts and evolves as they try to express it,” said Jamaal May of this poem. Growth is scary and difficult, but it is key in reaching your goals. So when you need a reminder that change is just a part of the process, this is a great place to find the motivation and inspiration to keep going.
"Crossing," by Jericho Brown
A poem for when the days feel repetitive.
The days move on and on and before you know it, a year has gone by, but that doesn’t mean you haven’t moved on your journey. Motivational poetry like this is there to remind you sometimes you have to take small steps to reach the end. You may have to cross back across the water, but you are looking forward, further beyond.
Inspirational Poets
Andrea Gibson
A poet for when you need a bit of honesty.
Andrea Gibson is a spoken word poet who can’t stop quoting their therapist. They are the Poet Laureate of Colorado and have published seven books, recorded seven albums, and have won numerous awards.
Their most recent collection, You Better Be Lightning, is a queer, political, and feminist collection that ranges from close and deeply personal experience to the vastness of the human experience. Their poetry is honest and relatable. Their motivational poetry invites readers to take a hard look at where they are and see where they intend to go.
Sarah Kay
A poet for when you are facing your fears.
Sarah Kay is a poet, educator, and founder of Project VOICE. With five books of poetry under her belt, she is a celebrated performer around the world. Her poetry is known for sparking joy and inspiration, as well as motivating readers to face life’s difficulties head on.
Fans of Kay’s work have been eagerly waiting for her second poetry collection to hit bookshelves. In 2025, A Little Daylight Left: Poems, comes out on April, 1st.
Maya Angelou
A poet for when you need to be strong and rise above adversity.
Angelou was a prolific poet and her poem, “Still I Rise,” is one of the most recognizable and quotable motivational poems of the century. Her ability to breathe life into her poems through spoken-word performances makes her numerous recordings even more powerful than words on paper.
Maya Angelou’s poems are may vary in theme and style, but the message of resilience flows through every stanza. She wrote on the important issues of her time and to the people who lived through it, but the passion and strength in her words continue to empower many today.
Must-Have Poetry Collections
Modern Poetry: Poems, by Diane Suess
A collection for when you need a little levity.
Diane Seuss’s signature voice–audacious in its honesty, virtuosic in its artistry, outsider in its attitude–has become one of the most original in contemporary poetry. Her latest collection takes its title, Modern Poetry, from the first textbook Seuss encountered as a child and the first poetry course she took in college, as an enrapt but ill-equipped student, one who felt poetry was beyond her reach. Many of the poems make use of the forms and terms of musical and poetic craft–ballad, fugue, aria, refrain, coda–and contend with the works of writers overrepresented in textbooks and anthologies and those too often underrepresented. Seuss provides a moving account of her picaresque years and their uncertainties, and in the process, she enters the realm between Modernism and Romanticism, between romance and objectivity, with Keats as ghost, lover, and interlocutor.
In poems of rangy curiosity, sharp humor, and illuminating self-scrutiny, Modern Poetry investigates our time’s deep isolation and divisiveness and asks: What can poetry be now? Do poems still have the capacity to mean? “It seems wrong / to curl now within the confines / of a poem,” Seuss writes. “You can’t hide / from what you made / inside what you made.” What she finds there, finally, is a surprising but unmistakable love.
How Lovely the Ruins: Inspirational Poems and Words for Difficult Times, by Annie Chagnot and Emi Ikkanda
A collection for difficult times
This wide-ranging collection of inspirational poetry and prose offers readers solace, perspective, and the courage to persevere.
In times of personal hardship or collective anxiety, words have the power to provide comfort, meaning, and hope. The past year has seen a resurgence of poetry and inspiring quotes–posted on social media, appearing on bestseller lists, shared from friend to friend. Honoring this communal spirit, How Lovely the Ruins is a timeless collection of both classic and contemporary poetry and short prose that can be of help in difficult times–selections that offer wisdom and purpose, and that allow us to step out of our current moment to gain a new perspective on the world around us as well as the world within.
The poets and writers featured in this book represent the diversity of our country as well as voices beyond our borders, including Maya Angelou, W. H. Auden, Danez Smith, Rumi, Emily Dickinson, Naomi Shihab Nye, Alice Walker, Adam Zagajewski, Langston Hughes, Wendell Berry, Anna Akhmatova, Yehuda Amichai, and Robert Frost. And the book opens with a stunning foreword by Elizabeth Alexander, whose poem “Praise Song for the Day,” delivered at the inauguration of President Barack Obama, ushered in an era of optimism. In works celebrating our capacity for compassion, our patriotism, our right to protest, and our ability to persevere, How Lovely the Ruins is a beacon that illuminates our shared humanity, allowing us connection in a fractured world.
Scattered Snows, to the North: Poems, by Carl Phillips
A collection to help you release what isn’t serving you
An arresting study of memory, perception, and the human condition, from the Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Phillips.
Carl Phillips’s Scattered Snows, to the North is a collection about distortion and revelation, about knowing and the unreliability of a knowing that’s based on human memory. If the poet’s last few books have concerned themselves with power, this one focuses on vulnerability: the usefulness of embracing it and of releasing ourselves from the need to understand our past. If we remember a thing, did it happen? If we believe it didn’t, does that make our belief true?
In Scattered Snows, to the North, Phillips looks though the window of the past in order to understand the essential sameness of the human condition–“Tears / were tears,” mistakes were made and regretted or not regretted, and it mattered until it didn’t, the way people live until they don’t. And there was also joy. And beauty. “Yet the world’s still / so beautiful . . . Sometimes // it is . . .” And it was enough. And it still can be.
A poetry journal for your own motivational poetry
An inspirational journal filled with rousing quotes from Presidential inaugural poet and activist Amanda Gorman‘s #1 New York Times bestsellers The Hill We Climb and Call Us What We Carry.
For there is always light,
If only we’re brave enough to see it,
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
Pulsing with hope and the fire to make change, Amanda Gorman’s poetry is a call to action. Her poems insist on the pursuit of positive change, the power of a single voice, and the universality of the human experience–that we all must come back to each other to create a better future.
As the youngest presidential inaugural poet, Gorman has established herself as a dynamic wordsmith with the power to inspire. Here for the first time is a journal that invites you to actively engage with her poetry. Flip from page to page to find over fifty quotes that challenge, uplift, and prompt dreams of a bright future, with an occasional poem reprinted in its entirety.
With vibrant, graphic designs, this journal provides readers an opportunity to consider their own influence on their communities, their dreams for the future, and the plans for positive change that are available within all of us.
