Our last #poetrygram for #NationalPoetryMonth is dedicated to the late beloved #poet Lucille Clifton, who won the #NBAward in 2000 for her collection of #poems Blessing the Boats. Clifton’s poems drew from her personal experiences as an African-American woman who came of age in the era of Jim Crow segregation. On our blog dedicated to the Winners of the #NBAward for #Poetry, poet and BookUpNYC instructor John Murillo praises Clifton’s “terse, clipped lines” meant to– in Clifton’s words– “comfort the afflicted, and to afflict the comfortable.” Murillo writes: “She knew a thing or two about life and mortality, about this world and its cruelties, and she wrote from the heart of it. Here is a wisdom without pretense, a voice we can trust because we know she won’t lie about what she’s seen.”