by Hugh Hazelton The Voice of the Other Growing up, I was always fascinated by history and geography, and as far as I can remember was perpetually in search of the other. The more ancient the civilization, the more exotic the hero(ine) or artist, the more distant the place, the greater my interest. Though I…

by Flavia Cosma for National Poetry Month, April 2020 Man knows much more than he understands. Alfred Adler, 1870 – 1937 A butterfly without wings would be just a poor insect moving with difficulty. Its oversized, colored wings make all the difference. A butterfly soars, dances, kisses beautiful flowers, it enchants us and makes us…

by Onjana Yawnghwe for National Poetry Month, April 2020 Poems are places for the mind, and as places mark you, so does poetry. Yet the mind is currently occupied, table for one. If the mind is a room, there would be no floor space, the shelves crowded with pictures of strangers, loose wires, and odd…

by Adebe DeRango-Adem for National Poetry Month, April 2020 It is understood by most that medical doctors save lives—and I cannot overemphasize the critical importance of our frontline health workers at this time. Yet I continue to believe that writers (creative writers, at that) also have the power to heal societies. While World Poetry Day…

by Feng Zhou for National Poetry Month, April 2020 There is an old book called “General Songs of Tang” in China, which recorded about 3,000 poets and 50,000 poems written in the Tang Dynasty (from 618 to 907). The book earned China its nickname: poetry nation. Today, the book still fascinates and inspires the whole…

Welcome to the first weekly round-up for National Poetry Month 2020. Below are highlights from this week’s NPM announcements, activities, blog, events, poetry prompts and more.  Celebrating the 2020 LCP Book Awards Longlist In honour of our first announcement of the 2020 Book Awards season, we would like to take an opportunity to congratulate and celebrate the…

by Erín Moure for National Poetry Month, April 2020 Toronto-native poet Norma Cole got me translating poetry. I wouldn’t have had the confidence on my own! I’d been improving my French for over a decade in Montreal when, in 1996, Norma emailed me from San Francisco asking me to co-translate some poems from French with…

by Abena Beloved Green for National Poetry Month, April 2020 Over ten years ago, I wrote this prose poem reflecting on driving in Ghana and about how incredible it is that a person wakes up in the morning, goes out in the world and returns in one piece in this country. The amount of traffic…

By Anna Yin for National Poetry Month, April 2020 When I was a kid, like others in China, I was taught to recite Chinese traditional poetry. I didn’t understand why and thought it was just for the culture and language. When a teenage, I occasionally wrote poems in Chinese but forgot them all, well, they…