April is National Poetry Month in Canada and the United States.(1) Founded by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, they’ve come up with a list of ways to celebrate poetry. For instance, April 14th is Poem in Your Pocket Day, and another suggestion is to read interviews and literary criticism about poets and poetry. To that end, I offer the following:
- Open Book Toronto is running a series, Poets in Profile, with interviews from various poets.
- The CBC‘s Canada Reads has expanded, launching a new version: Canada Reads Poetry. Very exciting.
- In “The New Math of Poetry“, David Alpaugh discusses the meaning of overabundance of poetry available today, and what we might be missing.
- Every year Tightrope Books puts out an anthology of the best Canadian poetry in English. A blog is maintained with posts written by various poets included in the anthology, and it’s excellent.
- On a related note, Michael Lista argues that literary magazines should fold. It generated responses from a number of people, most notably Laurie Fuhr, Michael Lithgow, and Vox Populism.
If you’re in Toronto, also check out Toronto Poetry Vendors, vending machines which issue brief poetry collections for a toonie — such a neat idea.
I have a few poems forthcoming in various journals, and I’ll let you know when and where they’re published once they become available.
Footnotes:
- The UK celebrates their poets in October. [↩]
