Monday Muse Asks Did You Know

Today's post is another in an occasional series providing information about poets, poems, or poetry-related items that you might not know.

Did You Know . . . 

✦ The president of Ireland, poet Michael D. Higgins, published his first poem, "The Prophets Are Weeping", since assuming office in 2011. Read the text of the poem.

"President Michael D. Higgins Releases Text of His New Poem", The Irish Times, February 10, 2015

✦ China has its own 21st Century version of Emily Dickinson: Yu Xihua, whose poem "Cross Half of China to Sleep with You" ("Chuan Guo Da Ban Ge Zhong Guo Shui Ni") went viral. Read "Hubei Women Dugged China's Emily Dickinson After Poem Goes Viral".

✦ Text and audio of poems by two dozen poets featured in Bread and Steel: Illinois Poets Reading from Their Works (2007), an anthology edited by Illinois's current Poet Laureate Kevin Stein, are available at Bradley University's Illinois Poet Laureate Website. Among the poets in the anthology are Edward Hirsch, John Knoepfle, Li-Young Lee, and Christian Wiman. 

✦ Among the books seized by New York City's police department during Occupy Wall Street events was People's Library by the late Philip Levine (1928-2015). Read "Subject Focus: Poet Laureate Philip Levine at Wayne State University" from Wayne State University's Walter P. Reuther Library, which holds some archives from Levine's time at WSU.

✦ President Warren G. Harding was a poet! Read Peter Armenti's Library of Congress blog post "'Wild to be loved': The Poetry of President Warren G. Harding", February 16, 2015.

✦ The "library of record" for 20th Century and 21st Century poetry in English, The Poetry Collection at University of Buffalo Libraries is described as "one of the world's largest collection of first editions and other titles; little literary magazines, broadsides and anthologies; a substantial collection of artworks; and more than 150 archives and manuscript collections." 

✦ The site Imediata features Brazilian visual poetry. (This is an archived poetry site, for years 2001-2007 but interesting nonetheless.) Also see the current homepage.

✦ At the 19th annual Ex Tempore salon on January 23, 2015, poems in Albanian were presented for the first time. A literary journal, Ex Tempore is published annually by the United Nations Society of Writers in Geneva. Membership in the society is open to active and retired employees of the U.N., specialized agencies, CERN, Permanent and Observer Missions, inter-governmental organizations, and others. The journal's issues are available online. (Read "Presheva Jone Promotes Albanian Poetry at UN Society of Writers Event".)

✦ The United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs sponsored in 2011 a "Poetry for Peace Contest." First, second, and third place winners were announced at U.N. headquarters in New York City. Poems submitted to the contest are available to read here.

✦ Each year, March 21 is celebrated as World Poetry Day. The proclamation of the decision establishing the date was introduced, adopted, and announced at the 30th UNESCO meeting in Paris in 1999.

World Poetry Day 2015 at UNESCO

UN Stamps for 2015 World Poetry Day