National Poetry Month

         April is National Poetry Month, but since April is also A to Z Blog Challenge month, that always takes precedence on this blog.  This year, however, I was especially active with National Poetry Month and I wanted to share a recap of some of that poetry goodness, even if belated.

        First of all, I had a number of duties as Poet Laureate of my town.

        1.  On April 13 I attended the opening celebration of a fresh new Poetry Walk at a local church.  They had solicited spring-themed haiku from members of their congregation, and they asked me to contribute some, as well.  They then made special lawn-sign flip-charts with the poems, and placed them throughout their small Memorial Garden, making a lovely, interactive way to engage with spring poetry among the flowers and emerging leaves.  (One of my poems that they used was my dandelion haiku.)

        2. On April 16 I led a Poetry-Writing Workshop at the Needham library.  We started with a few creativity warm-up exercises, and then went through three prompts, spending about 15 minutes on each, and sharing our efforts at the end of each.  The attendees were enthusiastic, willing to try whatever I threw at them, and came up with some excellent poetry.  (They especially impressed me with their tricubes!  That was a form I definitely struggled with, but some of them were able to use the form to advantage in really clever and effective ways.)

        3. On April 28 I gave a presentation for Great Poetry Reading Day for the town’s Council on Aging.  My assignment was to talk about myself and the role of Poet Laureate, and to read a few Great Poems.  I put my presentation together by interspersing the poems throughout the talk as illustrations of certain points in my explanation of the Poet Laureate role and how I got there.  This went over very well, and I ended by having the audience throw out their own favorite poems, which I then looked up and read aloud for them.  (To pull this post back a little more toward the fantasy theme of this blog, I’ll note that the poems I shared included the “Jabberwocky” and “The Listeners.”)

        All three of these sessions were pretty well-attended by the proverbial choir, so the preaching was very enjoyable!  But of course part of my job is to enlarge that choir and get poetry in front of more people who don’t necessarily already consider themselves poetry-lovers.  An activity that hopefully took a step in that direction actually took place outside of Poetry Month, on the first weekend of May.  During the annual Open Studios, I got 10 artists (including myself) to host Poetry Stations, in which they gave out copies of poems to everyone who visited them.  For the Poetry Stations I had selected 10 poems that were inspired by works of art, with a range of poets from Shelley to Yolen to myself, and a range of art from ancient to renaissance to modern.  I’m still trying to collect feedback on how much engagement that project got, but it included visitors who were very excited and were planning to collect all the poems, but also plenty of people who didn’t evince any interest at all!

        In addition to those official activities, I also had some more personal poetry activity during the month.  I was very pleased to have a poem accepted by Haiku Newton, which has printed poems for display.  (It makes me laugh, though, that it’s another spring-themed haiku.  Why does everyone always want spring-themed haiku?  Come on, people - there are other themes and there are other forms!)  For the kick-off all the poems are on display at the Newton library, but over the course of the year they’ll be placed in different areas throughout the city.

        The other thing I did was write a poem every day throughout the month of April.  I’ve never done that before and I enjoyed it very much, although some of the days were certainly more successful than others!  To be clear, only a few of them are what I would consider a finished, polished poem, and many of them will probably never be worth polishing up any further.  But the point was to do the exercise, and that was definitely a success.  Mostly I used the prompts from NaPoWriMo and Readers Digest Poem a Day, although on a few days I just followed an idea of my own.  Of the 30 poems (or, to be clear, poem drafts) about 8 were on fantasy themes, mostly fairy tales.

        I definitely want to keep up the momentum, although the first 8 days of May were so wildly busy for me that it would be more accurate to hope that I can get back the momentum before it gets too far behind me.  National Poetry Month turned out to be a good kick in the pants for my poetical activities, but I certainly don’t want poetry to be confined to just one month.

[Pictures: assorted photos of First Parish Poetry Walk,

Poetry Stations at Needham Open Studios,

Haiku Newton poetry signs, photos by AEGNydam, 2025.]