Poem-a-Day - "The grieving have only the unknown."

“There is no word for ‘silence’ in Zoque and there is no word for sankä in either Spanish or English. Sometimes, it takes a paragraph to translate a word—something that can’t be done in a poem.”

—Read our latest enjambments interview with Wendy Call and Shook on their translation of How to Be a Good Savage and Other Poems by Mikeas Sánchez, published this month by Milkweed Editions. Read a selection of poems from the collection:

“We’re All Maroons”
“Aisha”
“Ore’yomo (Two)”

“Poetry is a space with vast permission for nuance. Communities—ecosystems, towns, metropolises—need nuance.”

—Read an interview with Farnaz Fatemi, 2023 Poet Laureate Fellow and poet laureate of Santa Cruz County, California. Read a selection of Fatemi’s poems on Poets.org: 

“Heretic”
from “Sister Tongue”
“Farnaz”

We are thrilled to present Dear Poet 2024 in collaboration with 826 National, the largest youth writing network in the country. Dear Poet, an annual multimedia project launched by the Academy in 2015 as part of National Poetry Month, invites students in grades five through twelve to write letters in response to poems written and read by award-winning poets, including Academy Chancellors. Learn more about the program and how to participate. 

2024 Ambroggio Prize

The Ambroggio Prize is a $1,000 publication prize given for a book-length poetry manuscript originally written in Spanish and with an English translation. The winning manuscript will be published by University of Arizona Press in 2025. The judge is Norma Elia Cantú. Learn more here and apply by February 15, 2024 (11:59 p.m. ET).

2024 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award

The Harold Morton Landon Translation Award is a $1,000 award recognizing a poetry collection translated from any language into English and published in 2023. The judge is Valzhyna Mort. Learn more here and apply by February 15, 2024 (11:59 p.m. ET).