The 2017 National Poetry Month poster was designed by award-winning author and illustrator Maira Kalman, who has been called “the John Ashbery of painted illustration, whimsical and haunting, but with more dogs and pastry.”
The poster features an array of images—a rhinoceros, a woman singing, a birthday cake—rendered in paint, collage, and other media. In the downloadable PDF of the poster, each of these images links to a related poem.
Kick off National Poetry Month in the classroom with the following activities for this year's poster.
To read the poems associated with the 2017 National Poetry Month poster, download the poster and click on each image, or browse the anthology below.
Sign up for Teach This Poem to receive one poem a week from our online poetry collection, accompanied by interdisciplinary resources and activities designed to help teachers quickly and easily bring poetry into the classroom. In April 2017, Teach This Poem will feature poems from the National Poetry Month poster.
Invite your students to write letters to award-winning poets with Dear Poet, a multimedia education project featuring videos of eleven poets, including U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, reading their work. We will consider all letters for publication on Poets.org in May 2017, and our Chancellors will reply to select letters of their choosing.
Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day on April 27 by having your students select poems to carry with them and share with others throughout the day.
Engage with the celebration on social media using the hashtags #npm17 and #pocketpoem, and share your photos and stories from National Poetry Month with us on Twitter @POETSorg.