Today we signed a deal with King Features, a unit of Hearst Corporation, to syndicate Poem-a-Day. Through Poem-a-Day, each weekday, we publish and deliver a new, previously unpublished poem by a diverse range of contemporary United States-based poets. The poems are published on our website and distributed via email and social media to approximately 300,000 readers. Beginning April 14, King Features will make Poem-a-Day available to editors at a wide range of publications, potentially growing the readership for the daily poem by many times its current reach.
“In the past few years, we have experienced a dramatic increase in interest in the daily poem,” says Jennifer Benka, Executive Director. “As a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, we are interested in the reach we can provide news organizations and their associated media sites, who in turn make this premier cultural content available to a wider audience. We’re excited to renew the long tradition of poems being published in news publications.”
“We’re pleased to be working with the Academy to help bring poetry to the wider circulation of readers that news organizations make possible,” said Glenn Mott, King Features Managing Editor. “Journalists and poets are often in conflict over the meaning of words, but not their place in the world; poets may naturally envy journalists their readership, and journalists may envy poets their permanence. But they share many traits in the daily practice of their craft. A daily poem is as essential as the daily news. Both add their headlines, and this is the soul of each, that there are truths beyond the facts we know.”
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