As schools around the country ring in a new academic year, we’re excited to announce that former Poet Laureate Billy Collins has added five new poems to Poetry 180!
If you’re new to Poetry 180, here’s a little background: Billy Collins launched Poetry 180 as his signature poet laureate project in 2002, with the goal to give high school students a chance to listen to or read a poem on each of the 180 days of the school year. “Listening to poetry can encourage students and other learners to become members of the circle of readers for whom poetry is a vital source of pleasure. I hope Poetry 180 becomes an important and enriching part of the school day,” Collins said about the project’s aim.
Without further ado, here are the five new additions for the first half of the school year:
- “Can We Touch Your Hair?” by Skye Jackson
- “Wife” by Ada Limón
- “Rabbits and Fire” by Alberto Ríos
- “Making a Fist” by Naomi Shihab Nye
- “On the Psychological Effect of Living with Houseplants” by Stephanie Bishop
Enjoy these new poems, and remember to share Poetry 180 with all the poetry lovers in your life.
Keep up with Poetry 180 by subscribing to our daily e-mail blast or RSS feed. To learn more about the project, visit the Poetry 180 website.
Comments (5)
Thanks – now I don’t have to go through the whole collection trying to find what is new! I love clicking through the link and rediscovering old favorites every school day, but I don’t have the self-discipline to wait for these!
I’m happy Billy Collins continues to be involved in the project. I relish the variety evident in the new poems. This is a favorite annual experience for me. Always glad to have it start, always sad when “Poem 180” arrives.
Thank you for the Poetry 180 Project, Billy Collins and the Library of Congress!
I love this project, and I’ve been using it in my classroom for years.
I’m curious why the poems were changed? I taught “Sidekicks” by Ronald Koertge every year, and now the link is broken.
Would it be possible to get links the poems that have been removed, so I can continue to use them within Poetry 180?
Thanks!
Hi Tony,
It’s important to Billy Collins that the Poetry 180 list continues to introduce new and different voices. For rights and permissions issues, we don’t keep active links to poems we’ve replaced, but you can always access previous lists via the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20200729021019/https://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/p180-list.html
All best,
Anne
Sorry, this is simply NOT a poem. It’s straight prose broken into lines, a storyline without any mastery of word usage. Poetry should be mysterious and beautiful. This should not be labelled poetry.
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