For National Poetry Month 2014, we introduced Poet-to-Poet, a multimedia educational project that invites young people in grades three to twelve to write poems in response to those shared by some of the award-winning poets who serve on the Academy of American Poets Board of Chancellors: Poet Laureate of California Juan Felipe Herrera, National Book Critics Circle Award-winner Edward Hirsch, NEA and Guggenheim Fellow Jane Hirshfield, Lannan Foundation Fellow Naomi Shihab Nye, Pulitzer Prize-nominee Ron Padgett, Jackson Poetry Prize-winner Arthur Sze, and cofounder (with Allen Ginsberg) of the Naropa Institute Anne Waldman. We also worked with a curriculum specialist to design a series of activities, aligned with the Common Core for teachers to use in the classroom.
In May, we published a selection of the over 1,000 poems we received in response.
