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Spotlight on Poetry: About

Spotlight on Poetry

Featured Poetry: New to the Collection

LInk to Latino Poetry: the Library of America Anthology
Link to Pearl
Link to Above Ground
Link to The In-Between
Link to Poetry unbound: 50 poems to open your world by Padraig Ó Tuama in the catalog
Link to My Work
Link to Golden Ax by Rio Cortez in the catalog
Link to Your emergency contact has experienced an emergency by Chen Chen in the catalog
Link to The Rupture Tense: Poems by Jenny Xie in the catalog
Link to Girls that never die: poems by Safia Elhillo in the catalog
Link to Customs: Poems by Solmaz Sharif in the catalog
Link to Bless the daughter raised by a voice in her head: poems by Warsan Shire in the catalog
Link to Balladz by Sharon Olds in the catalog
Link to Against heaven: poems by Kemi Alabi in the catalog
Link to All the flowers kneeling by Paul Tran in the catalog
Link to Unshuttered: poems by Patricia Smith in the catalog
Link to Tijuana book of the dead by Luis Alberto Urrea in the catalog
Link to Poukahangatus: poems by Tayi Tibble in the catalog
Link to Why the assembly disbanded by Roberto Tejada in the catalog
Link to Yellow Rain: Poems by Mai Der Vang in the catalog
Link to Breath better spent: living black girlhood by DaMaris B. Hill in the catalog
Link to Bluest nude by Ama Codjoe in the catalog
Link to The tiny journalist : poems by Naomi Shihab Nye in the catalog
Link to Trickster Academy by Jenny L Davis in the catalog
Link to The trees witness everything by Victoria Chang in the catalog

April is National Poetry Month

National Poetry Month is the largest literary celebration in the world, with tens of millions of readers, students, K–12 teachers, librarians, booksellers, literary events curators, publishers, bloggers, and—of course—poets marking poetry’s important place in our culture and our lives every April.

Inspired by the successful celebrations of Black History Month (February) and Women's History Month (March), the Academy of American Poets established National Poetry Month in 1996. Along the way the organization enlisted a variety of government agencies and officials, educational leaders, publishers, sponsors, poets, and arts organizations to help. National Poetry Month is a registered trademark of the Academy of American Poets.

In coordination with poets, booksellers, librarians, and teachers, the Academy of American Poets chose a month when poetry could be celebrated with the highest level of participation. April seemed the best time within the year to turn attention toward the art of poetry, in an ultimate effort to encourage poetry readership year-round. Continue reading from The Academy of American Poets

The Value of Poetry in Today's Society

Poetry is intensely valuable to me and it always has been. It is my antidote to despair, tiredness and loneliness; a thread that runs through my life. I solve problems with its lines—not just their lexicon, but the life breathed into form by rhythm, rhyme or meter: a riddle; a moment of joy. It is my borrowed voice. 

A favourite is Louis MacNeice's 'Meeting Point', which I have always thought was a magisterial coming together of the ordinary and the the extraordinary; of quotidian rhythm and something magical. When I read this poem, I am caught up by its concept of the loved ones part of, yet isolated in happiness from the world; they are separate while they participate in daily activity. Something absorbing, supernatural and cosmic happens in the poem. And it is transporting.

Continue reading from Writers and Artists 

Watch Award-Winning Poets

More Poetry from the Collection

Link to Feed by Tommy Pico in the catalog
Link to Owed by Joshua Bennett in the catalog
Link to Un-American by Hafizah Geter in the catalog
link to Thrown in the Throat by Benjamin Garcia in the catalog