A Poetry Primer for National Poetry Month

It’s National Poetry Month, friends! Hands up if you’re excited! Ours are definitely up, way up. 2015 marks our third annual blog series celebrating National Poetry Month but our first on All Lit Up.

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It’s National Poetry Month, friends! Hands up if you’re excited! Ours are definitely up, way up.2015 marks our third annual blog series celebrating National Poetry Month but our first on All Lit Up. So lets take a trip down memory lane, shall we, to catch everybody up on the past two years:Our first year we went big, featuring 35 poets with our Coast-to-Coast Poetry Project or CoCoPoPro for those who like shorthand or tongue twisters (luckily we like both). Every day we featured at least one new poem and some insight from the poet about what they were reading and one poem everyone should read.Last year we once again featured poets from across the country but this time we got physical. Jumping on the League of Canadian Poets’ theme of Poetry City, we featured 12 poems all about a specific place in Canada and our poets shared why that place was so inspiring to them.Since this is our first NPM with All Lit Up we thought we’d take a broad approach that both bonafide poetry lovers as well as newbies to poetry can appreciate. For our Poetry Primer series we had 16 established, treasured Canadian poets each select an emerging, innovative voice they feel will make a mark on Canadian poetry. Throughout April we will feature a poem from each of the selected emerging poets, and our established poets will share with us why they chose their emerging poet while the selected emerging poets will share with us why they write poetry and who their influences are.By the end of April we think we’ll have more than a few of you newbie poetry readers converted to bonafide poetry lovers!Follow along with us all month long:* * *
We also have a couple other things up our sleeve to sweeten an already sweet NPM pot:We’ve put together these featured poems along with a poem from each of our established poets to create a special NPM anthology for those of you who want to bring our Poetry Primer series home. ibid.: a selection of Canadian poetry from All Lit Up is available in both print and electronic formats. If you purchase a book of poetry from us any time in April we’ll give you an electronic copy (epub or PDF) for free!Our merch shop is back! For the month of April you can get drape yourself and your place in All Lit Up swag! Our bags, buttons, and posters are once again available but we’ve got a few new items too, including our All Lit Up team shirts, magnetic poetry, and a special Poetry Month collection of 5 buttons. Check out all the ALU swag in our merch shop.