April is National Poetry Month

Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now held every April, when publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools and poets around the country band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events.

	Poem In Your Pocket Day: Join thousands of individuals across the U.S. by carrying a poem in your pocket on April 29, 2010.
	Poetry & the Creative Mind: Each April, The Academy of American Poets presents a star-studded celebration of American poetry.
	Poem on the Range Project: Put poetry on the map by submitting your videos or photos of places associated with iconic poems.
	Poem-A-Day: Great poems from new books emailed each day of National Poetry Month. Sign up for your daily dose of new poems from new spring poetry titles.
	Spring Book List: Check out the new books of poetry available each spring.
	Poem Flow for iPhones: Available through the iTunes store, this innovative mobile app features daily poems presented as both fixed and animated text.
	National Poetry Map: Find out what is happening in your state by visiting our redesigned and updated National Poetry Map.

Poet Laureate's Videoconference With Community College Students

Community College Poetry Day is April 1, and students around the country will be treated to a one-hour videoconference with U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, live from the Library of Congress

The videoconference and the day-long campus poetry festivities are part of Ryan’s "Poetry for the Mind’s Joy" project, sponsored by the Library in collaboration with the Community College Humanities Association (CCHA). Individual campuses are planning poetry readings, discussions, slams and other activities.

The videoconference on the process of writing poetry will start at 1 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, April 1. The event will be streamed live and can be viewed at www.loc.gov/poetry/mindsjoy/.

In the videoconference, Ryan will reveal some of her sources of inspiration, show how one of her poems developed through 10 drafts, and ask students to share some of their sources of inspiration and efforts in rewriting.


Ryan’s poetry project "Poetry for the Mind’s Joy," which she initiated during her second year as U.S. Poet Laureate, was designed to celebrate the poetry written by community college students. Besides the videoconference, Ryan’s project included a community college poetry contest administered by CCHA and its executive director, David Berry. Winners of the contest will be posted in an online anthology on the Library’s Website at by March 31.

As part of the project, Ryan named April 1 as Community College Poetry Day. April 1 is also the first day of National Poetry Month, a designation inaugurated in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets in New York.

Later, excerpts of the videoconference will be posted on www.loc.gov/poetry/ for students, their professors, poets and the public.

The Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress is the home of the U.S. Poet Laureate, a position that has existed since 1937.

Mid-Month Prompt Fix

In case you need some mid-month prompting...

Here are some from Peter Murphy's Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway event that were posted at http://metrophobic.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/poetry-prompts/

Where there's a Will (Shakespeare)

All the world's a stage! The Play's the thing. Fair is foul and foul is fair. Hardly a day goes by when the words that flowed from William Shakespeare's pen don't meet and greet us in the modern world.

This is a recommendation to listen to an episode from To the Best of Our Knowledge on Shakespeare today.

TTBOOK is a great radio program and it's available online and as a podacst in places like iTunes.

The episode is called "SHAKESPEARE: WHERE THERE'S A WILL."

You will discover My Name is Will by Jess Winfield, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespeare in Classical Comics,  The Works of William Shakespeare some things about the film Shakespeare in Love and Shakespeare's last will, about the continuing controversey about the authorship of the plays


               

Poetic License will be released on April 2nd, in celebration of National Poetry Month. It is GPR Records’ first release and features 100 poems read by 100 performers of stage and screen.

Here's the teaser: Jason Alexander reads Robinson's "Richard Cory."

A Gaggle of Bird Poems

In case you are looking for additional poems for this month's prompt...

Here's the table of contents to Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds. Many of these poems are also available online and in anthologies.


A Gull Goes Up by Leonie Adams
Philomela by Matthew Arnold
Vultures by Margaret Atwood
Bird-language by Wystan Hugh Auden
The Albatross by Charles Baudelaire
Owls by Charles Baudelaire
The Vulture by Hilaire Belloc
Job 39: 13-18 by Old Testament Bible
Sandpiper by Elizabeth Bishop
Three Things To Remember by William Blake
Winter Swan by Louise Bogan
To A Waterfowl by William Cullen Bryant
Woodpecker by Gerald Bullett
Address To The Woodlark by Robert Burns
The Cage by Geoffrey Chaucer
'the Nun's Priest's Tale: Chauntecleer by Geoffrey Chaucer
Rondel by Geoffrey Chaucer
The Kingfisher by Amy Clampitt
A Whippoorwill In The Woods by Amy Clampitt
Birds' Nests (2) by John Clare
Turkeys by John Clare
Storm by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Hundred-sunned Phenix by George Darley
The Dove by Walter John De La Mare
Jenny Wren by Walter John De La Mare
The Owl (3) by Walter John De La Mare
The Jay by Emily Dickinson
The Saddest Noise, The Sweetest Noise by Emily Dickinson
Little Birds Are Playing by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
To A Nightingale by William Drummond Of Hawthornden
A Minor Bird by Robert Frost
Never Again Would Birds' Song Be The Same by Robert Frost
The Oven Bird by Robert Frost
The Silver Swan by Orlando Gibbons
The Penguin Jane Austen by Debora Greger
Short Circuit by Daniel Hall
The Caged Goldfinch by Thomas Hardy
The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy
Turkeys Observed by Seamus Heaney
The Starling by John Heath-stubbs
House Sparrows by Anthony Hecht
On A Peacock by Thomas Heyrick
Owl by John Hollander
The Caged Skylark by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Peacock's Eye by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Windhover: To Christ Our Lord by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Wild Geese Flying by Barbara Howes
Curlews Lift by Edward James Hughes
Hawk Roosting by Edward James Hughes
Swifts by Edward James Hughes
The Mockingbird by Randall Jarrell
Hurt Hawks by Robinson Jeffers
Ode To A Nightingale by John Keats
Vulture by X. J. Kennedy
The Gray Heron by Galway Kinnell
Cormorants by John Kinsella
Hummingbird by David Herbert Lawrence
The Plumed Serpent: 11 by David Herbert Lawrence
The Owl And The Pussy Cat by Edward Lear
The Bird by Marie Rene Auguste Alexis Saint-leger Leger
The Man-of-war Hawk by Herman Melville
The Peacock by James Ingram Merrill
Fly by William Stanley Merwin
Wild Swans by Edna St. Vincent Millay
To The Nightingale by John Milton
He 'digesteth Harde Yron' by Marianne Moore
The Sea-gull by Ogden Nash
The Blue Swallows by Howard Nemerov
Hawk by Mary Oliver
Owl by Sylvia Plath
The Cranes by Po Chu-yi
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
The Harpies by Publius Vergilius Maro
The Flamingos by Rainer Maria Rilke
The Swan by Rainer Maria Rilke
The Heron by Theodore Roethke
Pain Or Joy by Christina Georgina Rossetti
A Robin's Nest by Mary Jo Salter
Pigeons by Vikram Seth
The Nightingales by Percy Bysshe Shelley
To A Skylark by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Cock-a-doo by Florence Margaret Smith
Quail In Autumn by William Jay Smith
The Merry Cuckoo by Edmund Spenser
Two Swans, Sels. by Edmund Spenser
Juncos by William Edgar Stafford
Pigeons On The Grass, Fr. Four Saints In Three Acts by Gertrude Stein
Domination Of Black by Wallace Stevens
Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird by Wallace Stevens
One Of The Strangest by May Swenson
The Dying Swan by Alfred Tennyson
The Eagle; A Fragment by Alfred Tennyson
Birds' Nests by Philip Edward Thomas
The Hollow Wood by Philip Edward Thomas
The Owl by Philip Edward Thomas
The Cuckoo Song by Anonymous
The Death And Burial Of Cock Robbin by Anonymous
I Saw A Peacock by Anonymous
The Lark by Anonymous
The Loon Upon The Lake by Anonymous
Magpies by Anonymous
The Twa Corbies by Anonymous
What Do We Geese Wear For Clothes? by Anonymous
Seagulls by John Updike
Mockingbird Month by Mona Van Duyn
Nuthatch by David Wagoner
Peacock Display by David Wagoner
Egyptian Kites by Rex Warner
Evening Hawk by Robert Penn Warren
A Listener's Guide To The Birds by Elwyn Brooks White
Out Of The Cradle Endlessly Rocking by Walt Whitman
The Robin by John Greenleaf Whittier
Impromptu by Samuel Wilberforce
A Black November Turkey by Richard Wilbur
Marche Aux Oiseaux by Richard Wilbur
To A Sparrow by William Carlos Williams
Ecclesiastical Sonnets: Part 1: 16. Persuasion by William Wordsworth
Black Cockatoos by Judith Wright
Pelicans by Judith Wright
Leda And The Swan by William Butler Yeats
Sailing To Byzantium by William Butler Yeats
The Wild Swans At Coole by William Butler Yeats