Poem in Your Pocket Day, Twenty Ten Twenty-Five, and more

April 27, 2021

Poem in Your Pocket Day: April 29

Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day with us by sharing these poems and more here:

“O Small Sad Ecstasy of Love” by Anne Carson
“Social Distancing” by Juan Felipe Herrera
“When I Rise Up” by Georgia Douglas Johnson
“Making History” by Marilyn Nelson
“Assured” by Alexander Posey
“Kissing in Vietnamese” by Ocean Vuong

Thirty Ways to Celebrate: It’s the Last week of National Poetry Month!

Join us as we celebrate the final week of the 25th annual occasion of National Poetry Month, an occasion we launched to honor the integral role that poets and poetry have in our culture. Explore thirty ways to participate virtually.

#NationalPoetryMonth Event Spotlight of the Week

Celebrate the last week of #NationalPoetryMonth with our Spotlight Event: Living Nations, Living Words with U.S. Poet Laureate and Academy of American Poets Chancellor Joy Harjo. Hosted by the School of Advanced Research and supported in part by the Academy of American Poets. Wednesday, April 28 at 2 p.m. MDT / 4 p.m. EDT. Register for this free event here.

Twenty Ten Twenty-Five: A Special Mellon Foundation Project Celebrating 25 Years of National Poetry Month

In honor of the 25th anniversary of National Poetry Month, we were pleased to assist with a special project from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation called “Twenty Ten Twenty-Five,” which features ten contemporary poets recommending ten classic poems that have helped them get through the present moment. Award-winning artist Sindha Agha has brought three of the poems and poets’ audio recordings to life through animated videos. Visit the project site to read the poems and watch the videos here.

Listen to Adrian Matejka read Langston Hughes’s “Democracy,” featuring illustrations by award-winning artist, Sindha Agha, as part of Twenty Ten Twenty-Five.

#PoetryNearYou Pick of the Week: Legacies of Black Poetry—Global Edition

Join us for our #PoetryNearYou Pick of the Week: Furious Flower’s Ancestors and Inheritances: Legacies of Black Poetry—Global Edition, which invites Black poets with non-US roots to consider how their writing is informed by their relationship to home, culture, and countries of origin and residence. Featuring Academy of American Poets Chancellor Kwame Dawes, Matthew Shenoda, Safiya Sinclair, Ladan Osman, and more. Co-sponsored by the Academy of American Poets and Amazon Literary Partnership. Friday, April 30 at 7 p.m. EDT. Learn more about and register for this free virtual event here.

Upcoming Contest Deadlines

Poetry presses and publishers, don’t miss the May 15th deadline for the 2021 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, awarded to the most outstanding book of 2020, and the 2021 James Laughlin Award, which recognizes and supports a second book forthcoming in 2022.

Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York City is seeking a Managing Editor to supervise day-to-day production and operations of The Margins.
CavanKerry Press in Fort Lee, New Jersey, is seeking a part-time Director of Development to write grant proposals, among other responsibilities. To apply, send resume and cover letter to Gabriel Cleveland, Managing Editor, at gabriel@cavankerrypress.org.
University of North Texas in Denton is seeking a full-time Lecturer to teach four courses each semester, in first-year writing and literature.

Thank You to Jane Hirshfield for Curating Poem-a-Day in April

“The old crises are still here—the crises of climate and biosphere, the crisis of our perennial, and increasing, human failings. I don’t know how my poems may enter them differently now. But one of the gifts of long silence, for me, is that the voice that returns is a voice changed. When I’ve forgotten who I was, how I spoke, what questions I used to ask, something new can emerge.”

—Jane Hirshfield, author of Ledger (Knopf, 2020), and Poem-a-Day Guest Editor for the month of April.

Poetry at The Greene Space

Join us for a special poetry event at The Greene Space: award-winning poet and artist Carl Hancock Rux welcomes Meshell Ndegeocello for the first live performance of her musical setting of his three-part poem, “Baptism (of the Sharecropper & the Boy from Boonville).” Followed by a conversation with Rux and Ndegeocello. Friday, April 30 at 7 p.m. EDT. Presented in collaboration with The Lincoln Center. RSVP for free here.

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

April 18: “Near the End of April” by William Stanley Braithwaite
April 19: “Bobolink” by Didi Jackson
April 20: “In her mostly white town, an hour from Rocky Mountain National Park, a black poet considers centuries of protests against racialized violence”
by Camille T. Dungy
April 21: “After Reading Kobayashi Issa’s The Spring of My Life On My 49th Birthday” by Dobby Gibson
April 22: “The Little Book of Cheerful Thoughts” by Jeffrey Harrison
April 23: “My Father’s Accent” by Kaveh Akbar
April 24: “Insomniami” by Ariel Francisco

Thank you to the following 2021 #NationalPoetryMonth sponsors & partners who help make possible the largest literary celebration in the world, now in its 25th year: Princeton University Press, Rain Taxi, Sarabande Books, Solid Objects, The Song Cave, Stadler Center for Poetry & Literary Arts, Strand Books, T. S. Eliot Foundation, The Telling Room, Ugly Duckling Presse, University of Arizona Poetry Center, University of Arizona Press, University of Pittsburgh Press, University of Wisconsin Press, W. W. Norton & Company, Wayne State University Press, We Are Bookish, and Wesleyan University Press.

The Academy of American Poets

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Poem in Your Pocket Day, Twenty Ten Twenty-Five, and more

Poem in Your Pocket Day: April 29

Thirty Ways to Celebrate: It’s the Last week of National Poetry Month!

#NationalPoetryMonth Event Spotlight of the Week

Twenty Ten Twenty-Five: A Special Mellon Foundation Project Celebrating 25 Years of National Poetry Month

#PoetryNearYou Pick of the Week: Legacies of Black Poetry—Global Edition

Upcoming Contest Deadlines

Thank You to Jane Hirshfield for Curating Poem-a-Day in April

Poetry at The Greene Space

Older messages

"Let Me Begin Again" by Major Jackson

Poem-a-Day needs just a few more readers to step in and help—will you be one?

"My Father’s Accent" by Kaveh Akbar

"The Little Book of Cheerful Thoughts" by Jeffrey Harrison

"After Reading Kobayashi Issa’s The Spring of My Life On My 49th Birthday" by Dobby Gibson

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