Each year National Poetry Month brings with it new projects designed with the purpose of celebrating great American poetry. For National Poetry Month 2015, the Academy of American Poets teamed up with the nonprofit youth writing organization 826 National to produce Read This Poem, a project meant to highlight and celebrate the work of poets in cities with 826 chapters: Ann Arbor/Detroit, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. Each chapter selected a poetry ambassador, who selected a poem written by a local poet and wrote a short essay about it. That poet picked another poem, and the chain went on until we closed out April with the final picks. Every Wednesday in April we revealed the new poetry picks for the week.
Even though National Poetry Month 2015 has come to a close, you can still follow the chain of poetry begun in each city, from ambassadors Kristen Evans (Boston), David Welch (Chicago), Kyle Dargan (Washington, D.C.), Iris De Anda (Los Angeles), Catherine Calabro and Hannah Rose Neuhauser (Michigan), Rachel Eliza Griffiths (New York), and Dean Rader (Valencia, California), to final selections Sam Cornish, Roger Reeves, Ailish Hopper, Terry Wolverton, Laura Kasischke, Camonghne Felix, and Tessa Micaela, respectively.
see the great poems from each city
For more on how we celebrated National Poetry Month 2015, and for ideas on how you can prepare for next year’s celebration, visit our National Poetry Month page.
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