“This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.” These lines are from the poem “Gate A-4" by Naomi Shihab Nye and were chosen to represent poetry on the National Poetry Month, April 2025 poster. You can read the rest of poem here on the Poets.org website.
Poetry is “...the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own,” Nobel Prize-winning poet Salvatore Quasimodo declared in a 1960 speech in New York.
How can you celebrate?
To celebrate this literary form, the Academy of American Poets began National Poetry Month in April 1996. Even if poetry isn’t your thing, the Poets.org website offers poems! Literary seminars!! And a way to order the enchanting poster pictured above!!! Other ways you may want to observe National Poetry Month are:
- Reading poems by California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick. Born in Daejeon, South Korea, and adopted to the United States as a baby, Herrick was first Fresno poet laureate from 2015 to 2017. In 2022, Herrick was appointed the tenth poet laureate of California. Read his poems here, like “My California,” which features Herrick’s hometown, Fresno.
- Read poems by National Poet Laureate Ada Limón here. Limon was born in Sonoma, California in 1976 and lives in nearby Glen Ellen.
- Read and listen to a poem a day here.
- Sign up here to receive a poem a day in your email inbox.
- Attend a poetry event near you. Natalie Diaz, MacArthur "Genius" Fellow and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for “Postcolonial Love Poem,” will be reading her work at Hammer Theatre in San José at 6:30 p.m., Thursday, April 17.
- Read Poets & Writers magazine online through the Palo Alto City Library catalog.
Come meet a poet!
Finally, you can come to your local library and meet a poet. Joan Gelfand has published three poetry collections: "The Long Blue Room," "A Dreamer's Guide to Cities and Streams," and "Seeking Center," showcasing her range as a poet and writer. Her poetry has been featured internationally, with "The Ferlinghetti School of Poetics" – a poetry film based on her work – screening at twenty international film festivals including Cannes and London. The film also earned a Certificate of Merit from the International Association for the Study of Dreams.
Joan Gelfand will talk about her recent memoir, Outside Voices: A Memoir of the Berkeley Revolution. A winner of the New York City Big Book Award and the International Book Award, Gelfand offers an intimate portrait of Berkeley in 1972 and the transformative power of the women's movement. She will also undoubtedly give us insight into writing poetry.
Join us Saturday, April 26 at noon in the Embarcadero Room to hear Joan discuss her work. More information is available here.
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