April: not the cruelest month but a poetry-filled month

April is National Poetry Month.  This celebration of poetry began in 1996.  (In Great Britain, since 2000, National Poetry Month is observed in October.)

It’s a month-long celebration of poetry readings, podcasts and just plain reading poems on your own each day.

One of our past feature readers, Gail Dendy from South Africa, shares two of her poems online, as an audio recording.


Click to hear Gail Dendy's poems

Also of note is Poem in Your Pocket Day, April 18, 2013.  The Academy of American Poets suggests that, on Poem in Your Pocket Day, you select a poem you love, carry it with you and share it with others throughout the day.

Here are some easy ways to celebrate:
— Hand out poems in your school or workplace.
— Start a street team to pass out poems in your community.
— Add a poem to your email footer.
— Mail a poem to a friend.
— Post a poem on your blog or social networking page.

Here is one of the poems I love and one of the candidates for the poem in my pocket this year:

THE SUITOR

We lie back to back. Curtains
lift and fall,
like the chest of someone sleeping.
Wind moves the leaves of the box elder;
they show their light undersides,
turning all at once
like a school of fish.
Suddenly I understand that I am happy.
For months this feeling
has been coming closer, stopping
for short visits, like a timid suitor.

Jane Kenyon