Looking Ahead to National Poetry Month 2016

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend January 27, 2016 Announcing National Poetry Month 2016   When we launched National Poetry Month in 1996, we couldn’t have predicted that it would become the largest literary celebration in the world. We look forward to you joining us in this coming April’s 20th anniversary celebration of poets and poetry!

Get Your Free Poster for 2016   Award-winning graphic design artist Debbie Millman has created this year’s official National Poetry Month poster, which features lines of poetry by some of our greatest poets. Each year we distribute over 120,000 free National Poetry Month posters to classrooms, libraries, and bookstores throughout the United States. Get the 2016 poster, available for free, at Poets.org, while supplies last.   Dear Poet 2016   Dear Poet, our multimedia education project, invites students in grades 5-12 to write letters in response to poems shared by award-winning poets serving on our Board of Chancellors. This year, Linda Gregerson, Juan Felipe Herrera, Jane Hirshfield, Marilyn Nelson, Alicia Ostriker, Alberto Ríos, and Anne Waldman recite their poems in a series of exclusive videos on Poets.org. Teachers interested in offering Dear Poet as a classroom activity can use our lesson plan that accompanies the videos. Juan Felipe Herrera: Dear Poet 2016   Watch U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera read his poem “All the Thoughts at a Football Game” as part of our National Poetry Month education project, Dear Poet. Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day   This year, on April 21, people throughout the United States will celebrate by selecting a poem, carrying it with them, and sharing it with others throughout the day as schools, bookstores, libraries, parks, workplaces, and other venues ring loud with open readings of poems from pockets. Find a poem on Poets.org to share. Share your plans for celebrating National Poetry Month on Twitter with #NPM16. Join us at Lincoln Center for the 14th annual Poetry & the Creative Mind gala, on April 27. Hosting a poetry event? List it in our events calendar. Poems That Celebrate Poetry   “The Poems I Have Not Written” by John Brehm “Blue or Green” by James Galvin “Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks” by Jane Kenyon “Ars Poetica (cocoons)” by Dana Levin “Ars Poetica” by Archibald MacLeish “Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry” by Howard Nemerov “Languages” by Carl Sandburg “Teaching the Ape to Write Poems” by James Tate “The Uses of Poetry” by William Carlos Williams 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

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