Since 1996, the Academy of American Poets has been celebrating National Poetry Month in April of every year. What a wonderful time to celebrate poetry, with the arrival of spring awakening everything around us, including inspiring words and thoughts! Created to encourage publication, reading, and support of poetry and poets, and to highlight all of the extraordinary work done and still being done by poets, National Poetry Month is the perfect time to reflect on the beauty of language and words, and to look for, or create, poetry in our every day lives.

Throughout this month, we’ll share poems created here on the Western New England campus over the years. To start the month off, here is a poem that begins, very appropriately, with thoughts on how to write poetry. This very meta poem, titled “Poem on Poetry”, appeared in The Westerner in April of 1950.

If you would like more poetry in your life this month, consider signing up for Poem-A-Day, and receive a new poem in your in box every day this month. You can sign up on the Academy of American Poet’s website, where you can also view the daily poem. And be sure to check back for more poems written by the campus community!