Poem-a-Day - National Poetry Month and more

Congratulations to Kweku Abimbola, whose manuscript, Saltwater Demands a Psalm, has been selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tyehimba Jess as the recipient of the 2022 Academy of American Poets First Book Award, the nation’s most valuable first-book prize for a poet. Abimbola’s manuscript will be published by Graywolf Press in April 2023. In addition to publication, he will receive a six-week all-expenses-paid residency at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Umbria, Italy.
 

Don’t miss our signature National Poetry Month virtual reading, Poetry & the Creative Mind, with masters of ceremony Richard Blanco and Terrance Hayes, and featuring readings of favorite poems from Rosanne Cash, Willem Dafoe, Ann Dowd, 2022 Leadership Award recipient Joy Harjo, and more luminaries from across the arts and culture.

This signature annual gala celebrating poetry’s important place in our lives, raises critical funds to support the Academy of American Poets Education Program. Join us for our live broadcast April 28, at 7:30 p.m. EDT, free and open to the public. Learn more at Poets.org.

 

“Good teachers open the door, then get out of the way so students can walk through themselves. Youth art doesn’t need to be sustained so much as it needs free reign. Where wonder and honesty have faltered, roadblocks have been erected. If we, as adults, would just stop road-blocking kids at every turn with our own biases, our own anxieties, our own fears; if the kids were just set free, so to speak, who knows where they would go. They certainly wouldn’t sit still in their elders’ shadows. ”

—Read this interview with 2021 Poet Laureate Fellow M. Bartley Seigel, on his work in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. 

#PoetryNearYou Pick of the Week: Right Here in Our Bodies: Latinx Poetry & Disability Justice
 

“Being editor of Poem-a-Day during National Poetry Month is better than a lifetime dream come true. It’s been my continual joy to share poems with other people—hopefully, poems that might move or transport them—so, doing it with this wide audience, at this moment in history, feels especially touching.”

—Naomi Shihab Nye, Poem-a-Day Guest Editor for National Poetry Month. Read more about Shihab Nye’s curation and sign up for Poem-a-Day to read along this April.