January 25, 2022 (New York, NY)— The Poetry Coalition, an alliance of more than 25 independent poetry organizations across the United States, will devote 2022 to exploring the theme “The future lives in our bodies: Poetry & Disability Justice” in a series of programs in fifteen cities that will reach an anticipated audience of more than 300,000 individuals nationwide.
The line “The future lives in our bodies” is from the poem “Femme Futures” by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.
Poetry Coalition members aim to demonstrate how poetry can positively provoke questions in their communities about disability justice and spark increased engagement with this urgent topic.
This will be the sixth year Poetry Coalition members have come together to offer programming on a shared theme. Members presented events and publications on the theme “It is burning./ It is dreaming./ It is waking up.: Poetry & Environmental Justice” in 2021; “I am deliberate/ and afraid/ of nothing: Poetry & Protest” in March 2020; “What Is It, Then, Between Us?: Poetry & Democracy” in March 2019; “Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live: Poetry & the Body” in March 2018; and “Because We Come From Everything: Poetry & Migration” in 2017.
Any and all literary organizations, presses, libraries, classrooms, bookstores, community initiatives and beyond are invited to offer their own programming on the theme in support of and in partnership with the Poetry Coalition.
Find and promote your own projects with the hashtags #DisabilityJustice and #PoetryCoalition.
About the Academy of American Poets
Founded in 1934, the Academy of American Poets is the nation’s leading champion of poets and poetry with supporters in all fifty states. The organization annually awards more funds to individual poets than any other organization through its prize program, giving a total of $1.25 million to more than 200 poets at various stages of their careers. The organization also produces Poets.org, the world’s largest publicly funded website for poets and poetry; organizes National Poetry Month; publishes the popular Poem-a-Day series and American Poets magazine; provides award-winning resources to K–12 educators, including the Teach This Poem series; hosts an annual series of poetry readings and special events; and coordinates a national Poetry Coalition working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture.
About the Poetry Coalition
The Poetry Coalition is a national alliance of more than 25 organizations dedicated to working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and the important contribution poetry makes in the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds. Members are nonprofit organizations whose primary mission is to promote poets and poetry, and/or multi-genre literary organizations that serve poets in the disability community and of specific racial, ethnic, or gender identities, backgrounds, or communities. All members present poets at live events. All members present poets at live events. Each March, members present programming across the country on a theme of social importance. The Poetry Coalition is coordinated by the Academy of American Poets and we are grateful to The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for its support of this work.