Poem-a-Day - "We, too, are made of wonders"

In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa

Arching under the night sky inky
with black expansiveness, we point
to the planets we know, we

pin quick wishes on stars.

Congratulations to U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, who is included on Time’s 2024 Women of the Year list. Limón’s poem “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa” will be engraved inside the Europa Clipper, a spacecraft set to launch on October 10, 2024, and begin orbiting Jupiter by 2030. 

This summer, Limón will embark on a tour across the U.S., unveiling poetry installations in seven national parks as part of “You Are Here,” her signature program as poet laureate, and the title of an anthology Milkweed will publish this spring. The Academy will feature four selections from the collection in Poem-a-Day in April.

In celebration of the Academy’s ninetieth anniversary and Women’s History Month, we share this photograph from our archives of former Chancellor Lucille Clifton signing a book after her 1995 reading at The New School in New York City.

“Some fundamental sensory perception is always at stake. Questions don’t typically prompt poems for me, but analysis does.”

—Read an interview with Sharon Kennedy-Nolle, 2023 Poet Laureate Fellow and poet laureate of Sullivan County, New York. Enjoy a selection of Kennedy-Nolle’s poems on Poets.org: 

“Return of the Woolly Mammoth”
“It Was Enough”

Get the 2024 National Poetry Month poster in celebration of the active role poetry plays in young people’s education. The poster features artwork by award-winning children’s author and illustrator Jack Wong, and lines from “blessing the boats” by Lucille Clifton. The poster will be distributed free-of-charge to 85,000 classrooms, libraries, bookstores, community centers, and homes in time for the April 2024 occasion of National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world. 

Join us on Tuesday, March 19, at 4:30 p.m. PDT / 7:30 p.m. EDT (online) for the 2024 Blaney Lecture: “Making the Invisible Visible: Some Thoughts on Poetry & Science” delivered by Jane Hirshfield, former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. 

Hirshfield writes, “both poetry and science are tools for making visible what was always there to be seen. Both also create new ways of seeing, feeling, knowing, and 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, and doable.”

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

2024 Poetry Fund Applications Open

In alliance with the Amazon Literary Partnership, the Academy of American Poets invites poetry organizations and presses to submit applications for grants from the Poetry Fund, which will be awarded in 2024. Grant applications are being accepted now through April 15. Learn more and apply.

2024 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize & 2024 James Laughlin Award  

We are now accepting submissions from publishers for the 2024 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, which recognizes the most outstanding book of poetry published in 2023, and the 2024 James Laughlin Award, given to a second book of poetry forthcoming in 2025. Learn more here and apply by May 15, 2024 (11:59 p.m. ET). 

2024 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowships

The Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowships are $50,000 awards given to honor poets of literary merit appointed to serve in civic positions and to enable them to undertake meaningful, impactful, and innovative projects that engage their fellow residents, including youth, with poetry, helping to address issues important to their communities. We are accepting applications for the 2024 fellowships until April 8, 2024, at 11:59 p.m. ET.