Every year, The Rumpus celebrates National Poetry Month with new poems from poets we admire. We feature a different poet each day, aiming to illustrate a variety of voices and perspectives in contemporary poetry. New poems will appear on weekday afternoons and weekend mornings. We’ll be sharing the poems on our Facebook page and Twitter feed, and we hope you’ll consider sharing the work of these thirty talented writers on your own social media feeds, too. You can follow along here.
Poetry has always mattered very much to us at The Rumpus. Under the leadership of senior poetry editor Brian Spears, we’ve been celebrating National Poetry Month since 2010, just one year after The Rumpus was founded. Past years have included work from Tracy K. Smith, sam sax, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Danez Smith, Tommy Pico, Ada Limón, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Nikki Wallschlaeger, and Victoria Chang, just to name a few.
I am incredibly grateful to Team Rumpus Poetry for the phenomenal work they do. From National Poetry Month to Rumpus Original Poetry to poetry book reviews to our Poetry Book Club, our poetry editors are working tirelessly to shake up the still overwhelmingly white, cis, hetero, male poetry landscape.
Rumpus Original Poetry editors Cortney Lamar Charleston, Carolina Ebeid, and Nicholas Nichols have assembled an incredible lineup of poets for this year’s National Poetry Month. This year, 63% of our National Poetry Month poets identify as women or non-binary, 73% identify as writers of color, and 43% identify as LGBTQIA+.
We’ll kick off the month-long celebration this afternoon with the stunning, timely, and ultimately hopeful poem “Like a Dishrag Soaked in Bleach,” from Matthew Olzmann. Don’t miss it, and please stick with us through April, because every day we’ll deliver a new voice and vital words.
This year, especially, we need to hear from, and listen to, our poets. This year, especially, we need to be lifted up from despondency, and be motivated to take action and continue demanding change.
This April, be inspired, be moved, and celebrate poetry!
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Rumpus original art by Dmitry Samarov.
