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It’s just a few days before the start of National Poetry Month 2023, and we’re happy to report that Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry Ada Limón will be the guest editor for the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series during April.
The Academy started featuring U.S. poets laureate as Poem-a-Day guest editors for April back in 2018 with Tracy K. Smith. Smith also edited the series in April of 2019, followed by Joy Harjo in 2020. As of this year, the laureate guest editorship is a collaboration between the Academy and the Library of Congress.
Limón said of the twenty poems she selected for the series, “I wanted poems that felt like they had a life to them; that they were expansive in some way; that they were reaching out towards a reader, whether that reader was one intimate person or a larger readership. I wanted them to feel like they were vibrating. I think of April as an alive month, when we come back to life in some ways. And so I wanted these poems to perform a little resurrection, I think.”
Hope you enjoy the poems! We look forward to posting more news on our laureate–including on her poem for a NASA space mission–in the weeks to come.
Comments (8)
tis such a special treat,
so thanks for being so sweet
Thanks but where’s the poem?
It’s coming, I promise–more soon!
When Billy Collins was Poet Laureate, he had a poem of the day program particularly geared to high school students and consisting of 180 poems, not all his. I haven’t been a schoolchild for many decades, but I looked for the poems and saved some of my favorites. Two that I often think of are “Otherwise” by Jane Kenyon and “Sister Cat” by Frances Mayes. Another, more relevant than ever, is “Lesson” by Forrest Hamer.
Mary Goldwag – the Poem A Day project is alive and well! You can sign up for a daily poem at //www.loc.gov/programs/poetry-and-literature/poet-laureate/poet-laureate-projects/poetry-180/ and see all your favorites roll by every year along with occasional new ones. I subscribe both to that and to the year-round Poem A Day that’s mentioned here. It’s a moment of breath every day.
Poem a day by the poet laureate
Keeps me inspired.
Thanks!
I just received my April calendar from the Library of Congress and was sad to see that, although April is National Poetry Month, there was not a single poetry event on the list. What has become of the Library’s once prestigious and vibrant poetry reading series?
I will be interested to read the poems and participate in in person poetry writing & sharing programs locally.