Celebrate Black History Month, The Weary Blues, and more

More Content for Black History Month

Browse essays, photographs, important books on Black history and poetics, lesson plans, archival letters from classic Black poets, and more. 
 

The Weary Blues

Read poems published in The Weary Blues (Knopf, 1926), which are now in the public domain, along with many essays and texts about Hughes, including “On Langston Hughes’s The Weary Blues” by Kevin Young, and contemporary criticism of The Weary Blues. 

Carolyn Forché Named Newest Chancellor
of the Academy of American Poets

The Academy of American Poets is honored to announce that Carolyn Forché has been elected its newest Chancellor, a distinction shared by just 120 poets since 1946, when the group was formed to ensure that poets would always be at the heart of the organization. Read more about Carolyn Forché, plus poems, here. 

“Poetry is as widely accessible as the drum. Every world culture has a form of both. Just as the drum is representative of the beating heart, poetry is an extension of our human experiences, the circadian rhythm of imagination that awakens us, and also allows us to rest. Drums and poems call to us when we hear them.”

Read this interview with 2021 Poet Laureate Fellow, Magdalena Gómez, on her work in Springfield, Massachusetts.

The Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowships are $50,000 awards given to honor poets of literary merit appointed to serve in civic positions. The awards 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, as well as create new work. We are accepting applications for the 2022 fellowships from December 6, 2021 until February 18, 2022, at 11:59 p.m. EST. Find out more here.  
 

Deadline Tomorrow: Literary Arts Emergency Fund 

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, current Omicron surge, and related hardships for organizations nationally, the Literary Arts Emergency Fund reopened its submission portal for a two-week extension from Wednesday, January 19, 2022 to tomorrow, February 2, at 6 p.m. EST. We warmly encourage all nonprofit literary arts organizations and publishers who have not yet applied to please submit applications during this window. 
 

Join us on Wednesday, February 23, at 4 p.m. PST / 7 p.m. EST for the 2022 Blaney Lecture, “Beyond Empathy, Beyond the Archive: Notes on Poetic Representation,” delivered by Utah Poet Laureate and 2019 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow Paisley Rekdal. This virtual event is free to attend. A Q&A session will follow the lecture. ASL interpretation will be provided.

The lecture was created in memory of former Academy of American Poets Board member Dr. Dorothy Gulbenkian Blaney, past president of Cedar Crest College and champion of women and education, by a gift from her estate.