Poem-a-Day - A Year of Sheltering in Poems

March 9, 2021

A Year of Sheltering in Poems

This week marks a year since most cities went into lockdown due to COVID-19. At the beginning of the pandemic, we launched Shelter in Poems, asking readers to share poems in which they find solace. Today, we revisit some of these poems and programs to hold on to our hope.

“My Daughter's First Week” by Gennady Aygi
“Morning on Shinnecock” by Olivia Ward Bush-Banks
“Untitled” by James Baldwin
“Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow” by Robert Duncan
“Social Distancing” by Juan Felipe Herrera
“Things I Didn’t Know I Loved” by Nazim Hikmet
“Part of Eve’s Discussion” by Marie Howe
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes
“Disclosure” by Camisha L. Jones
“The Layers” by Stanley Kunitz
“The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus
“The Broken Sandal” by Denise Levertov
“Instructions on Not Giving Up” by Ada Limón
“Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye
“Brown Love” by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
“Twenty-One Love Poems [Poem III]” by Adrienne Rich
“I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone” by Rainer Maria Rilke
“The Niagara River” by Kay Ryan
“women’s voting rights at one hundred (but who’s counting?)” by Evie Shockley
“The Flower at My Window” by Lucian B. Watkins

In April 2020, The Academy of American Poets launched Shelter in Poems, an initiative that invites poets and poetry lovers to share poems that give them comfort or courage. “Shelter in Poems: A Virtual Reading” extended this idea with a special offering of poems read by poets laureate, actors, musicians, artists, and more.

Black Lives Matter and the Poem-a-Day Summer Series

This past summer, the Academy of American Poets was honored to announce six new guest editors for Poem-a-Day, the organization’s daily poetry series, who each selected work by contemporary Black poets to be featured in the publication. Read those poems, and more, in our Black Lives Matter anthology.

In August 2020, the founding members of the Poetry Coalition presented a live broadcast of “One Poem: A Protest Reading” in Support of Black Lives.

Virtual Summer Camp

For teachers and students, we created Summer Camp, a six-week newsletter series that was distributed from June through August 2020 that we hoped would help educators as they continue to find creative ways of engaging students with poetry.

Artist Relief Fund: Cycle X

In April 2020, a coalition of national arts grant-makers, which included the Academy of American Poets, among others, launched Artist Relief to assist artists and writers facing dire financial emergencies due to the impact of COVID-19. Artist Relief is currently open for applications, making at least 100 grants per month from now through June to individual artists and writers. Cycle X is open through March 31st, 11:59 p.m. EST.

The Academy of American Poets was honored to present “Gather In Poems: A Virtual Reading” in November, which reflected on how sharing poems can create a sense of community, especially at a time when we must be apart.

Nonprofit Organizations Awarded $50,000

Thanks to a collaboration between the Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets and its Board of Directors, ten organizations each received a $5,000 contribution from the Academy. Organizations and presses were recommended by the Academy’s Chancellors, and funds were raised by its Board of Directors.

Get Your Free Copy of the 2021 National Poetry Month Poster!

This year’s poster was designed by Bao Lu, a twelfth grader from Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn, New York and the winner of the 2021 National Poetry Month Poster Contest. Get your free copy of the poster!

Check out our #PoetryNearYou Pick of the Week: Hudson Valley Writers Center Reading with Jill Bialosky, Mark Wunderlich, and Kazim Ali

Join us for a Hudson Valley Writers Center reading featuring Jill Bialosky , Mark Wunderlich, and Poem-a-Day’s August guest editor Kazim Ali, on Wednesday, March 10 at 7 p.m EST / 4 p.m. PST. Co-hosted by Hudson Valley Writers Center and Book Ya Ya. Tickets are $10 or free for HVWC students.

Opportunities for Poets

The Academy of American Poets is seeking a full-time Content Producer to create original content featuring the Academy’s Poets Laureate Fellows.
Bemidji State University in Minnesota is seeking a full-time Assistant Professor of English: Digital Writing and Rhetoric to begin teaching August 17, 2021.
University of Chicago Press is seeking a full-time Production Editor to monitor the work of freelance copy editors, proofreaders, and indexers for book-length scholarly manuscripts.

What Sasha Pimentel is Currently Reading

“I spent the morning typing up the two versions of James Baldwin’s ‘A Letter to My Nephew,’ how it first appeared in The Progressive in 1962, versus the 1963 version in The Fire Next Time as ‘My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation.’ I do this a lot, transcribe a writer’s text, and I do it a lot with Baldwin because it’s a way to enter, and be inside, his sentences. To see how he’s working through his clauses, and his commas, and his punctuation. I don’t think I ever understood the power of a comma until I started studying Baldwin. How he can just distill a clarity, and weight, into a part of language with the right pauses.”

—Sasha Pimentel, author of For Want of Water (Beacon Press, 2017), and Poem-a-Day Guest Editor for the month of March.

Last Week’s Poem-a-Day

Revisit last week’s Poem-a-Day selections with us on Poets.org:

February 28: “Thought.” by Alice Dunbar-Nelson
March 1: “The Moons of Neptune” by Như Xuân Nguyễn
March 2: “Prologue to a Womanhood” by Hera Naguib
March 3: “1967, Girl and Snow” by Corrinne Clegg Hales
March 4: “Aubade at the City of Change” by Aldo Amparán
March 5: “Torch” by Deborah A. Miranda
March 6: “Map” by Linda Hogan

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Poem-a-Day - A Year of Sheltering in Poems

A Year of Sheltering in Poems

Black Lives Matter and the Poem-a-Day Summer Series

Virtual Summer Camp

Artist Relief Fund: Cycle X

Nonprofit Organizations Awarded $50,000

Get Your Free Copy of the 2021 National Poetry Month Poster!

Check out our #PoetryNearYou Pick of the Week: Hudson Valley Writers Center Reading with Jill Bialosky, Mark Wunderlich, and Kazim Ali

Opportunities for Poets

What Sasha Pimentel is Currently Reading

Last Week’s Poem-a-Day

Older messages

"Blood and Bones" by Mahtem Shiferraw

"Soulwork" by Tracy K. Smith

"If You Knew" by Ruth Muskrat Bronson

"Map" by Linda Hogan

"Torch" by Deborah A. Miranda

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