Monday Muse: Poet-to-Poet Project

2014 NPM Poster*

Designer Chip Kidd

Tomorrow is April 1 and the start of National Poetry Month. This year, the Academy of American Poets has created for youths in grades 3-12 the educational Poet-to-Poet Project. 

For the project, poets who have served or currently serve on AAP's Board of Chancellors —  Juan Felipe Herrera, Edward Hirsh, Jane Hirshfield, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ron Padgett, Arthur Sze, and Anne Waldman — have recorded and talk about a poem to which students are invited to respond with a poem of their own. Students will have until April 30 to send in their work, which will be considered for online publication at Poets.org in May. If you are an instructor, please read and share with your students the details to participate.

The project also includes a series of lesson plans for teachers.

Below are two video recordings from the project. In the first, Jane Hirshfield reads and discusses the poem "My Skeleton". 

In this second video,  Naomi Shihab Nye reads and talks about "Valentine for Ernest Mann".

What will you be doing to celebrate National Poetry Month?

* The 2014 National Poetry Month poster features these lines from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" from Leaves of Grass: "Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, / Missing me one place search another, / I stop somewhere waiting for you."

National Poetry Month Sponsors: Academy of American Poets, American Booksellers Association, American Libraries, National Council of Teachers of English, National Endowment for the Arts (Art Works), Poetry Foundation, Random House, Scholastic, T.S. Poetry Press (TweetSpeakPoetry), and 826 National (a network of writing and tutoring centers).