Announcing The Poetry Project

I speak here of poetry as a revelatory distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean–in order to cover a desperate wish for imagination without insight.

from “Poetry is Not a Luxury” by Audre Lorde (Sister Outsider)

April is National Poetry Month here in the US. On my old blog, a decade ago, I’d post a poem a day every day in April.  Instead of doing that, I thought it would be fun to feature a different poet three times a week. You won’t see any dead white European men being featured because poetry is a living thing and the poets who speak to me now are those who are working now.

This is a dramatic shift in my thinking. When I was in college, I didn’t want to read living poets–not because I didn’t think they were doing good work, but because I had some really strange ideas in my head. I suspect it was a kind of patriarchal bargain on my part–that if I devoted myself to learning about the white men who came before that perhaps, someday, I would be worthy of joining them.  That’s a sucker’s game and I wish I hadn’t played it. But 20 year olds aren’t exactly known for making the best life choices, so. Nonetheless, poetry has always remained important to me.

As I was compiling the list of poets I wanted to feature, I was struck by just how many of them are people I know and respect. I find their combined body of work really inspiring and I hope you do as well.

As the month progresses, I’ll be keeping this post up to date with an index (something I wish I’d done for Bad Life Decisions last year).

• April 5: Amal El-Mohtar
• April 6: Peg Duthie
• April 7: Rita Dove
• April 12: Bogi Takács
• April 13: Shveta Thakrar
• April 14: Elise Matthesen
• April 19: C.S.E. Cooney
• April 20: M Sereno
• April 21: Rose Lemberg
• April 24: W.B. Yeats
• April 26: Mari Ness
• April 27: JC Reilly
• April 28: Tracy K. Smith