Who to follow for National Poetry Month—and maybe all year long
1 • Poetic Earth Month
If you love to sit on a pristine beach, watch a gorgeous sunset over mountains or plains, enjoy delicious food with friends, or any number of amazing things we can do on this beautiful earth, you might like the chance to “read and write the world, poetically” during Poetic Earth Month.
Poetic Earth Month is a public month sponsored by Tweetspeak Poetry, as a sister celebration during National Poetry Month. You can try the website’s 30 Days, 30 Poems challenges. Or use their convenient Earth to Poetry challenge book.
An initiative of Kwame Dawes’s (formerly done by Ted Kooser), ALPoetry offers weekly a free, downloadable poem with commentary. It also boasts an archive of hundreds of poems that are frequently humorous, sometimes deeply moving, and always speak to place and what is uniquely American in spirit.
Click to get the FREE 5-prompt mini series
Emphasizing poetry as oral tradition, this site showcases poets with fewer than two published collections. What matters are not the names on the poems but the poems themselves, presented in their creators’ voices. With more than 500 audio files, the site offers users insights into how emerging poets think about and practice their craft.
4 • Modern American Poetry Site
The serious student or teacher of poetry cannot go wrong with MAPS, which comprises more than 30, 000 pages of online biographies, critical essays, syllabi, and images for more than 160 modern poets. For some poets, it’s the only source for scholarly commentary. Detailed analyses of poems and poetry-related ephemera are noteworthy.
Not everyone can “get” a poem by reading it. MotionPoems animates words in ways that uncover meaning through wonderfully creative use of music and graphics.
Click to get the FREE 5-Prompt Mini-Series
No site does a better job than PennSound of documenting, preserving, and making easily accessible historic and contemporary sound recordings you’ll find nowhere else.
We like how poets are singled out among the larger group of writers here. The trove of resources includes unparalleled databases of literary magazines, presses, agents, contests, writers’ tools, and readings and workshops. The “My P&W” community is active and supportive.
Cheeky Harriet, the foundation’s blog, makes clear that poetry doesn’t equate to the stiff and stuffy. Notable site features include a Learning Lab, children’s poetry, podcasts, video, and selections from the estimable Poetry magazine. Poems are searchable by school/period, regions, and century and can be accessed using the latest technology.
Click to get the FREE 5-prompt mini series
Start in Afghanistan and end in Zimbabwe, but let PIW take you on your global poetry tour. You won’t need a passport to cross borders and listen to the many voices you’ll hear only in this international community. In addition to informative articles, audio/video recordings, and interviews, PIW offers thousands of poems in their original language and English translations.
While this site deals with the world of literature as a whole, it also shares a wide variety of international poetry. As their stated mission notes, they seek to “open doors for readers of English around the world to the multiplicity of viewpoints, richness of experience, and literary perspective on world events offered by writers in other languages.” You’ll find new voices here that you might not find elsewhere. Explore.
BONUS
For mothers, daughters, sons, or whoever has loved (or struggled with) their mother, this growing collection of poetry stirs and consoles, humors and challenges. And the tagline alone is worth a visit.
Photo by PS Lee, Creative Commons, via Flickr. This is a modified reprint of a post by Maureen Doallas, author of Neruda’s Memoirs: Poems.
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Maureen Doallas says
I was disappointed in the list of poetry sites mentioned in this month’s Writer’s Digest. The list was so predictable! Am going to send WD some suggestions, I think.
Thank you for the reprint!
L. L. Barkat says
Online digest, or print?
Thank *you* for the list. You know how to pick ’em. 🙂
Maureen Doallas says
The March/April issue is in print. I don’t see the article, 101Best Websites for Writers, online. The mag does an annual list of all the various genre sites. I do think TSP should be on it!
L.L. Barkat says
your mission, should you choose to accept it… 😉
thanks for that encouragement!
Lavonne Westbrooks, editor says
Your list is comprehensive. I love all those sites. If you want to join an excellent poetry workshop, please visit poetrycircle.com. We are a workshop for everyone and we focus on poetry for publication.
L. L. Barkat says
We talk about your site in our book How to Write a Poem: Based on the Billy Collins Poem “Introduction to Poetry.” 🙂
Lavonne says
Thank you!
Dawn says
Excited for April, and love this list!
David Gosselin says
I would recommend The Chained Muse poetry website as well:
https://www.thechainedmuse.com/
Abdullah Jan says
I appreciate your efforts. This list is awesome and helps poets a lot. I am also a poet of a regional language Urdu and run a poetry blog and still struggle to learn new things in poetry. anyone interested in Urdu poetry may visit http://www.karim99.com
Melissa M Matis says
If I have already subscribed, can you tell me why the site still continues to have the pop-up window to ask me to subscribe? I’ve verified by email, too. It’s quite frustrating as someone who very much wants to use the site for educational purposes.
L.L. Barkat says
Melissa, very sorry about that. There’s something apparently awry with the popup code, but it’s not something we have access to in order to fix.