Introducing This Year's Walt Whitman Award Winner

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend April 15, 2014 Coming Soon: The New Poets.org   Over the past year, the staff at the Academy of American Poets has been busy building a new Poets.org. We’re happy to share that we are putting the finishing touches on it and will reveal it very soon.  The new site promises to be more visual, mobile friendly, and easier to navigate. It’s one of the important ways in which we are marking our eightieth anniversary this year.   Read more about our website relaunch in Publishers Weekly.

Poem-a-Day Syndicated Worldwide   The Academy of American Poets has partnered with King Features, a unit of Hearst Corporation, to bring daily poems back to newspapers and magazines.   Beginning this week, King Features will make Poem-a-Day—our digital publication featuring previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets—available to editors at a wide range of publications. It has been a generation since new poems have been available to daily news readers, and we’re thrilled to help renew this tradition.    You can receive Poem-a-Day in your inbox every morning by subscribing. Meet the 2014 Walt Whitman Award Winner: Hannah Sanghee Park   Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Rae Armantrout has selected Hannah Sanghee Park’s manuscript “The Same-Different” as the recipient of the 2014 Walt Whitman Award, the Academy’s prestigious first book prize.   “The poems in ‘The Same-Different,’ beginning with a set of gnomic sonnets, tell it slant, then slanter,” Armantrout writes. “They are so full of chiasmus, pun, and near-rhyme that their figures twist back on themselves like strands of DNA or a staircase by Escher. They are mirror-bright. This book is a literally dazzling debut.” A New Resource for Poem in Your Pocket Day on April 24   Each year on Poem in Your Pocket Day, people throughout the United States select a poem, carry it with them, and share it with others. So that you can be fully equipped next Thursday, the Academy of American Poets has created a new packet of public domain poems to choose from and share freely. Download the poems.    Tweet your poem @POETSorg using #pocketpoem for a chance to win a copy of Jon J. Muth’s children’s poetry book Hi, Koo! courtesy of our friends at Scholastic. Young Poets: The Poet-to-Poet Project Is For You   This April, we’re inviting young poets in grades three to twelve to write and submit poems in response to those shared by some of the poets who serve on our honorary Board of Chancellors.    Some students’ poems will be published on Poets.org in May. To learn more, visit the Poet-to-Poet project. We look forward to reading your poems! Visit the Academy's store to order Poem in Your Pocket books Discover thirty ways to celebrate in your community Share your celebration on social media using the hashtag #NPM14 Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038