"Though dark and forsaken my pathway may seem, / I’ll press bravely on"

Celebrating Black History Month

In the summer of 1966, Elizabeth Kray, then executive director of the Academy of American Poets, invited Langston Hughes, the leading poet of the Harlem Renaissance, to read in New York City at the Guggenheim Museum with fellow New York poet Léonie Adams. The “dreary times” Hughes mentions likely refers to the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and the escalating war in Vietnam. However, However, August 1966 was a particularly troubled time in American history. In the first week alone, the country witnessed a mass shooting at the University of Texas at Austin, race riots in Lansing, Michigan, and Martin Luther King’s civil rights march in Chicago that ended with King being struck by a rock thrown by white protesters. Hughes would read at the Guggenheim with Adams that October, both poets introduced by Marianne Moore. He died the following spring on May 22. 

Browse more archival materials, as well as poems, essays, and videos in honor of Black History Month.

This Week: Join Us at #AWP24

If you’re attending #AWP24 in Kansas City this week, stop by the Academy of American Poets’ booth (#724) to say hello and pick up some free poetry merch. We look forward to seeing you there!

This Week: An #AWP24 Reading by Suji Kwock Kim, Sara Daniele Rivera, and Nicole Sealey, Presented by the Academy of American Poets

Saturday, February 10
12:10 p.m. to 1:25 p.m. CT
Ballroom A, Level 2, Kansas City Convention Center

Don’t miss our signature AWP reading, featuring award-winning poets Suji Kwock Kim, author of Notes from the North (Smith/Doorstop, U.K., 2021) and Notes from the Divided Country (Louisiana State University Press, 2003); Sara Daniele Rivera, author of The Blue Mimes (Graywolf Press, 2024), winner of the Academy of American Poets’ First Book Award; and Nicole Sealey, author of The Ferguson Report: An Erasure (Alfred A. Knopf, 2023) and Ordinary Beast (Ecco Press, 2017). 

#PoetryNearYou Pick of the Week

SWWIM, in partnership with The Betsy Hotel, presents a reading with Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow and The Betsy Writers Room Artist in Residence Farnaz Fatami and Fabienne Josaphat, poet and cofounder of SWWIM on Wednesday, February 7, at 6 p.m. at The Betsy Hotel (The Carlton Room, Hohauser Wing, 1433 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, FL 33139). RSVP for this free event here.

Join us on Thursday, March 7, at 4:30 p.m. PT / 7:30 p.m. ET (online) for the 2024 Blaney Lecture: “Making the Invisible Visible: Poetry, Science, Perception-Increase, and Change” delivered by Jane Hirshfield, Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets.

Both poems and science are tools for making visible what was always there to be seen. Both also create new ways of seeing, feeling, knowing, living. Amid the crises, griefs, divisions, and losses of the current era, this talk explores a few examples of the ways in which expansions of saying and knowing are also expansions of what might be possible, thinkable, doable.

This virtual event is free to attend with registration. Closed captioning will be provided. 

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).