Keep a Poem in Your Pocket This Week

This Thursday (April 21) is Poem in Your Pocket Day as part of National Poetry Month,sponsored by the Academy of American Poets and supported by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and ReadWriteThink.org.

The basic idea is simple - carry a favorite poem in your pocket and share it with others that day.  The Academy offers a printable list of suggestions and some poems for the day at poets.org

Here are a few other ideas.

• Post pocket-sized verses in public places. Use the aptly named poem, �Keep a Pocket in Your Poem�.
• Memorize a poem. and speaking poetry
• Post lines from your favorite poem on your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Tumblr. You might want to turn your original poetry into digital form using something like Animoto.
• Send a poem to a friend.

Bill Murray: Poetry Editor

Bill Murray supports New York's Poets House and has been known to hang around with Billy Collins and others and read or post poems. In celebration of National Poetry Month, Oprah Magazine asked him if he would be interested in picking some poems for the magazine to print and to comment on them. He was and he did.


Galway Kinnell, Lucille Clifton, Thomas Lux and Naomi Shihab Nye are among the poets that Murray chose to include in the issue.

Some of his comments:

On Kinnell's "Oatmeal," about the poet sharing a meal with the late John Keats: "Alas, Kinnell, too, is now available for breakfast." (Kinnell passed away in 2014.)

Lux's odd romantic ode "I Love You Sweatheart" starts out:

A man risked his life to write the words.
A man hung upside down (an idiot friend
holding his legs?) with spray paint
to write the words on a girder fifty feet above
a highway.

The poem got this note: "This poem vibrates the insides of my ribs, where the meat is most tender."

Nye's poem "Famous" says:

I want to be famous in the way
a pulley is famous
or a buttonhole, not because it did
anything spectacular
but because it never forgot
what it could do.

Murray comments on it: "It's not the dream of being big. It's the dream of being real. That's what stands out to me."

www.nme.com/news/

National Poetry Month 20th Anniversary

April is National Poetry Month. Since 1996, we have a put more emphasis on things poetic for that month and it has become the largest literary celebration in the world. This year is the 20th anniversary celebration of poets and poetry.

I have been getting a copy of the official National Poetry Month poster and collecting them since the beginning. For 2016, artist Debbie Millman created one which features lines of poetry by some of our greatest poets. 

The Academy of American Poets distributes over 120,000 posters to classrooms, libraries, and bookstores throughout the United States and you can get one for free, while supplies last.


https://www.poets.org/national-poetry-month/
https://www.poets.org/national-poetry-month/form/poster-request-form

National Poetry Writing Month #NatPWriMo

National Poetry Writing Month is an annual project during National Poetry Month that encourages participants to write a poem each day in April.  

Abbreviated as NaPoWriMo, you can find it on Twitter and other social networks with the hashtag #NaPoWriMo. 

NaPoWriMo founder Maureen Thorson will post daily prompts on the NaPoWriMo site through the month and there are also prompts at The Daily Post.

If you�re sharing your poems online, you can submit your site to the NaPoWriMo showcase and allow other participants can find you. Also tag your posts with #NaPoWriMo on Wordpress.

Walt Whitman 2014

Walt is all around us lately.

Did you take note of the Apple television ad for the iPad Air? It quotes Whitman's �O Me! O Life!� to promote the idea of creating and uses Robin Williams from his English teacher role in Dead Poets Society.

�That the powerful play goes on,
and you may contribute a verse.�

Walt is also on the new poster designed by the Academy of American Poets for this year's  National Poetry Month.  You can request a copy online.

The poster uses the closing lines of �Song of Myself,�

�Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged;
Missing me one place, search another;
I stop somewhere, waiting for you.�

If you want to go deeply into Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," you can enroll in a free course offered online by the University of Iowa. This course - known as a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) - will be open to thousands of people at no cost (and for no credit).

�Every Atom: Walt Whitman�s Song of Myself" will take a collective approach to a close reading of America�s democratic verse epic, first published without a title in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass and later titled "Song of Myself" in the 1881 edition.

Today Is Poem in Your Pocket Day

As part of National Poetry Month, you should celebrate national Poem in Your Pocket Day today, April 18, 2013.

All you need to do is select a poem, carry it with you, and share it with others throughout the day. You can also share your poem selection on Twitter by using the hashtag #pocketpoem.

Poems from pockets will be unfolded throughout the day with events in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores.

For more information, scheck all the National Poetry Month information at www.poets.org


     

April Is National Poetry Month

Since 1996, April has been National Poetry Month, a month-long, national celebration of poetry established by the Academy of American Poets.

It's a month to get some media attention to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our complex poetic heritage, and to poetry books and journals.

The Academy of American Poets has led this initiative from its inception in 1996 and along the way has enlisted a variety of government agencies and officials, educational leaders, publishers, sponsors, poets, and arts organizations to help.

The goals of National Poetry Month, according to the Academy are to:

• Highlight the extraordinary legacy and ongoing achievement of American poets
• Introduce more Americans to the pleasures of reading poetry
• Bring poets and poetry to the public in immediate and innovative ways
• Make poetry a more important part of the school curriculum
• Increase the attention paid to poetry by national and local media
• Encourage increased publication, distribution, and sales of poetry books
• Increase public and private philanthropic support for poets and poetry