Celebrate National Poetry Month

Photo of a page in a book with text of a poem and author's name. Galway Kinnell' "Prayer": Whatever happens. Whatever *what is* is is what I want. Only that. But that.

As I developed my poetry-reading habit I learned April is National Poetry Month, established in 1996. If you're talking about poetry in social media this month use #NationalPoetryMonth. 

Celebrate April 18 as Poem in Your Pocket Day and spread poetry online, in person, in whatever way strikes your fancy. Maybe one of the poems from my posts here and on my Bike Style blog has become a favorite and you're going to print out copies and give them to people, put them in a Little Free Library, leave one on the table at your favorite coffee shop. 

Or perhaps you're simply going to read some poems. You may end up memorizing one and putting it in your mental pocket to keep, as I have with Galway Kinnell's gem, "Prayer" (follow the link to get a video of the poet performing this):

Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.

Where I find poems

I have a good-sized and growing collection of books by favorite poets (Bookshop.org affiliate collection at the bottom of this post is by no means complete). In my online list of sites I keep adding one more tab to the browser set I keep available. I don't visit every one of these every day; some I do, some I spend time with on a rainy Saturday. Occasionally I go in search of a specific poem referred to in an article and find a whole new collection to work my way through, thanks to the magic of the internet. Some of these I read my way through a while back but they keep growing and I expect to revisit at some point. In addition to this list I sometimes go to the site of a poet who's new to me and read whatever they've made available online.

A Hundred Falling Veils: Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer posts a poem every day, which you can subscribe to receive via email as well as reading them on her site. I visit the site for that day's poem and occasionally search the archives on a specific term. I own several of her books, and she led me to the next site on my list.

A Year of Being Here: Curated by Phyllis Cole-Dai, this site offered a mindfulness poem every day for three straight years. I found it long after the project ended and have been reading my way through the site for going on three years myself, each day reading the poems posted on that date. This site led to the publication of Poetry of Presence, which I read during the early days of the pandemic, and Poetry of Presence II.

American Life in Poetry: I'm working my way back through the archives of this project, the result of a long-running project of publishing poems in daily newspapers.

Poetry Foundation: They publish a poem a day along with writing about poetry. I'll admit I far prefer reading poems to reading about poems, English lit college classes notwithstanding.

Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day: Another site with a poem served fresh every day. They often use older poetry that's in the public domain, which I find less appealing than new poetry.

Poetry Society of America: I truly had no idea there were so many nonprofits dedicated to poetry. Here the poems come bundled with essays that I sometimes read, sometimes skip.

Poetrying: An eclectic collection that isn't adding new poems, but holds plenty for me to work back through.

The Far Field: Washington state poet laureate Katherine Flenniken published poems by Washington poets 2012-2014; the archive continues to 2016.

Library of Congress Poetry 180: When Billy Collins served as the national poet laureate he created this set of poems high schools could use to share a poem every schoolday in a typical school calendar year.

Maya Stein 10-line Tuesday: Stein publishes (spoiler alert) a 10-line poem every Tuesday. You can subscribe to receive them via email or work your through them as she posts them online.

Anthony Wilson, Lifesaving Poems: British poet Anthony Wilson curated a list of poems he describes as "lifesaving," which he turned into a book of the same name. Describing his approach, he writes, "My criteria were extremely basic.  Was the poem one I could recall having had an immediate experience with from the first moment I read it? In short, did I feel the poem was one I could not do without?" He has other collections and his own work on the site.

Grateful.org: Another collection I think of as based in mindfulness and awareness.

Read a Little Poetry: Collection started in 2005 by poet T. De Los Reyes.

Inward Bound Poetry: Yet another poem collector.

And one I can no longer find, so if this rings a bell drop a link in the comments, please! For a while I was reading my way through a truly international collection of poems curated by an engineer from...India, maybe?... who wrote an essay with each poem talking about its context, the poet's biography, other features. I enjoyed the site and now can't find it in my Google history. Various search attempts bring me nothing but ads assuming I want to publish my own book of poetry and an intriguing set of links that have something to do with engineering poetry, or engineering being like poetry, or poems about engineers.... I'm off on another hunt.

My bike racks, ferry landings, and train stations full of poems

Poetry books on Bookshop.org

If you can afford to buy books I hope you support your local independent bookstore. If you can't, libraries are amazing! And putting in requests for titles supports authors in a way that lets others read their work too. If you want/need to shop online, the Bookshop links below are affiliate links. In the unlikely event I ever receive any commissions from book sales I'll donate those funds to organizations working to make streets and cities safer and more just.


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