A Special Message from the Academy of American Poets

Dear Friend, Happy National Poetry Month!  We never imagined when we launched NPM 18 years ago that it would become the largest literary celebration in the world! The Academy of American Poets has a great deal planned for this year’s commemoration. As you can see, we’ve introduced our new look, and later this month will launch the new Poets.org. We’ve distributed thousands of free posters to classrooms around the country and produced a new special project for students: Poet-to-Poet. This April, our goal is to remind tens of millions of individuals of the important place poets have in our culture, inspiring many to continue reading poems year-round. But we need your support to make that possible.

As poetry is taught less and less in schools, we need to do more to help passionate teachers bring poetry into their classrooms. Poet-to-Poet is a multimedia educational project that invites students to watch our Chancellors read a poem, and then write one of their own in response. For teachers, we developed a Common Core-aligned lesson plan to accompany the project. We will be working to raise $25,000 this month to support education projects like Poet-to-Poet. Please donate to help us meet our goal. Every dollar counts – Abrams Books has generously agreed to match every dollar we raise, up to $10,000. That means your donation will have twice the impact. We rely on your donations to produce the high quality materials and resources we make available to students and teachers for free on Poets.org. Over the next 30 days, thousands of poets will give public readings, some will be challenging themselves to write a new poem every day, hundreds of publishers will be releasing new collections of poetry, and thousands of librarians and teachers will be organizing Poem in Your Pocket Day events. You can be a part of National Poetry Month, too, with a gift to support our programs. Donate today. With your help, we will nurture a next generation of poetry readers.

Sincerely, Jennifer Benka Executive Director Academy of American Poets