National Poetry Month is the largest literary celebration in the world, with tens of millions of readers, students, K-12 teachers, librarians, booksellers, literary events curators, publishers, bloggers, and, of course, poets marking poetry’s important place in our culture and our lives every April.

Inspired by the successful celebrations of Black History Month (February) and Women's History Month (March), the Academy of American Poets established National Poetry Month in 1996. Along the way they enlisted a variety of government agencies and officials, educational leaders, publishers, sponsors, poets, and arts organizations to help. National Poetry Month is a registered trademark of the Academy of American Poets.

The goals of National Poetry Month are to:

highlight the extraordinary legacy and ongoing achievement of American poets

encourage the reading of poems

assist teachers in bringing poetry into their classrooms

increase the attention paid to poetry by national and local media

encourage increased publication and distribution of poetry books, and 

to encourage support for poets and poetry.
Assumption Faculty have been participating in the “Dear Poet” project with students.  Teachers use free poetry lesson plans and curriculum units on Poets.org.

At Assumption, our 2nd grade students were asked to write about “Where they find poetry” with the beginning of each line beginning with the word, “In”.  Now, spelling and grammar aren’t the important thing in this exercise, rather that they express their real feelings about where they find poetry.  Here is a sample: