The Poetry Foundation Tells Us All to Take a Walk

To start us off, I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, even those of you who do not live in the US. Regardless of whether or not you celebrated the holiday, I hope you took the time, like I did, to listen to the stories, jokes, and perhaps even poems of your friends and family.


Now that we're all back and refreshed from this most gustatory of celebrations, I'm sure we could all use a nice long walk to get rid of those extra pounds. Well, our friends at The Poetry Foundation have us covered.  They've recently kicked off an exciting new walking tours project in both DC and Chicago.

Poetry Competition Inspires Kids to Slam

Among the many things that the US government is doing to promote poetry, the National Endowment for the Arts, in partnership with the Poetry Foundation, has a great program for kids across the country known as Poetry Out Loud.

Many of you are educators who may already know about this program, which has been in operation since 2006. But for those of you aren't familiar with it, here's how they describe their mission:

Recitation and performance are major new trends in poetry. There has been a recent resurgence of poetry as an oral art form, as seen in the slam poetry movement and the immense popularity of hip-hop music. Poetry Out Loud builds on that momentum by inviting the dynamic aspects of slam poetry, spoken word, and theater into the English class.

The National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation have partnered with State Arts Agencies of the United States to support the expansion of Poetry Out Loud, which encourages the nation's youth to learn about great poetry through memorization and performance. This exciting program helps students master public speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about their literary heritage.

Not only is this program a fantastic way to get kids excited about poetry, its website is also chock full of additional resources for students and teachers. The site is a great destination for kids who want to know more about poetry: it features a poet of the day, a great audio guide to poetry, and a nice collection of classic poems for new poetry readers. The teachers' section of the site has an excellent set of lesson plans and writing activities to seamlessly incorporate the competition into the classroom.

Government often puts a lot of emphasis on science and math education, and while these subjects are important, a solid grounding in poetry can be just as essential: fun, illuminating, and empowering. The resources at the Poetry Out Loud website, and the competition itself, showcase the ways in which people across the US are taking a stand for poetry in the classroom.

Overview: The Poetry Foundation

The Internet contains a wealth of information about poetry, but sometimes it can be overwhelming. For those who want a simple place to start, I recommend the website of the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation. If you’re not yet familiar with this organization, they describe themselves as “an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. It exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience.” The Foundation’s website is a treasure trove of resources and information devoted to this purpose and is divided into five sections: Features, Archive, Programs, Foundation, and Poetry Magazine.

The Features section contains articles on a variety of poetry-related topics as well as links to news items from sources worldwide, and a blog maintained by members of the Foundation’s staff. It also contains a list of recent poetry bestsellers in the categories of “contemporary,” “anthology,” “children’s,” and “small press.” The most interesting items found in the Features section—in my opinion, anyway—are the five video series and eight audio podcasts the Foundation offers; both informative and entertaining, they’re definitely worth checking out.

In the Archive section, the Foundation maintains a gallery of poetry-related photos, cartoons, posters, and other media suitable for viewing or printing, a selection of online analyses (reading guides) of various poems, and links to hundreds of other websites that poets and poetry aficionados might find useful, including publishers, blogs, poetry organizations, reference resources, and more. Also lodged within the Archive section is the Foundation’s “Poetry Tool,” which is, essentially a searchable database of poems and poets, neatly broken down into categories and subcategories; it also serves as a search engine for the entire website, making it possible to find the articles, podcasts, and videos devoted to the topics you want.

The Poetry Foundation sponsors a number of programs promoting poetry, and these can easily be found in the Programs section of the site. Here you can learn about the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute, the purpose of which “is to convene interested parties to champion common solutions for the benefit of poets and the art form of poetry,” as well as the Foundation’s Poetry Media Service, which provides book reviews, general articles, interviews, and profiles to newspapers and online publications in an attempt to bring poetry to the attention of the general populace. In addition, there is a page that catalogs poetry events in the Foundation’s home base of Chicago, and for teachers and parents, the Children’s Poetry page compiles the site’s articles, poems, videos, and podcasts dedicated to teaching children about poetry.

The Foundation section of the website includes the obligatory “About” page, contact information, various announcements, and a sign-up form for the Foundation’s newsletter. For dedicated poets, it also includes information about awards, prizes, and fellowships offered by the Foundation.

Finally, the Poetry Magazine section features a selection of articles from current and past issues of Poetry as well as a subscription form and information on submitting your work for publication.

I consider the Poetry Foundation website a fundamental resource for poets and others who enjoy poetry. If you have never visited the site, or have given it only a cursory view in the past, I urge you to take a look at all it has to offer and make as much use of it as you can.