Celebrating National Poetry Month

Item No. 5 on our Southern Bucket List for 2015 is to read or write a poem. This month, we’re making it easy by posting a poem a day for National Poetry Month. Starting today with a poem inspired by the Kentucky landscape, you’ll find a new poem in our Southern Voice section each morning (or the links in our Twitter and Facebook feeds). That’s 30 poems for 30 days in April!

We also have interviews with Southern poets lined up throughout the month and will be posting these on Fridays, along with suggestions of chapbooks to read and general poetry news. If you’ve never found a way to enjoy poetry before or have always wanted to try your hand at writing a poem, National Poetry Month is the time to do it. We’re honored to take part in the largest literary celebration in the world and be able to showcase the talent of Southern poets.

We encourage our readers to show their support by sharing our daily poems on social media using the hashtag #npm15 and commenting on their favorites. A reader comment on our bucket list perfectly illustrates the importance of poetry and trying new things:

“Our group of three couples have been inspired by your bucket list. We have decided to do a bucket list of our own. We borrowed one from the list already. One of us just celebrated a milestone birthday. We each brought poems to read aloud during our dinner. We loved it.”