The month of April brings all the beacons of Spring – flowers in bloom, more hours of daylight, and on warmer city days, ice cream trucks. It’s also National Poetry Month, a time to celebrate the craft of poetry. Below are a few local and online resources to pique your interest, and perhaps also your creative spirit.
Local Poetry Resources
The Nuyorican Poets Cafe is an award-winning location and event space in the East Village, hosting over 100 readings, poetry slams, music concerts, and so much more, every year. It began in 1973 as “a living room salon,” founded by a group of “playwrights, poets, and musicians of color whose work was not accepted by the mainstream academic, entertainment or publishing industries.” The Nuyorican Poets Cafe also accepts volunteers and hosts internships, for those looking to expand their horizons towards events management/planning and other live events.
Poets House – For those looking for a (very) quiet study space, and perhaps some poetic inspiration, check out this Lower Manhattan space. Free and open to the public, the organization offers access to an extensive library of chapbooks and works of poetry.
Online Poetry Resources
Curious about the lives of your favorite authors or poets? You can always search for biographies in the Library Catalog, and Gale Biography In Context.
There’s also the website Poets.org, which includes mini-biographies of many current poets, as well as individual poems. Poets often tackle hard, contemporary topics that may elude or escape familiar interpretation.
Open Educational Resources
If you’re an instructor seeking to introduce poetry to the classroom, try this new book from the State University of New York (SUNY) – Naming the Unnameable: An Approach to Poetry for New Generations. It’s available for free download or viewing online, as part of the state funding towards Open Educational Resources (OER).
There are also many works on Poetry.org that could be interwoven to your course site or class discussion, including the full text of Alan Ginsberg’s Howl. Although under copyright, you can always link out to these available resources.
