NPM17: THAT’S A WRAP

Every year it feels like there are more and more exciting goings-on for National Poetry Month, and 30 days is just not enough time to celebrate them all! Here are a few highlights from April, including awards announcements, fun articles about the benefits of reading poetry, and much more! If you ran a NPM campaign this April and you’d like us to add it to our roundup, email [email protected].

NPM WITH THE LEAGUE

  • First and foremost, we’re excited to welcome the 16 poets who joined our ranks during National Poetry Month! Welcome to our awesome new members. If you’re interested in joining the League, visit poets.ca/join!
  • On our blog, we shared several posts with the theme NPM and Beyond! to give reading tips, writing tips, and poetry recommendations to use throughout the year. We chatted with several poets to bring you discussion on the act of reading (where? when? how often?), favourite books and poets, how poets engage with the editing process. We also learned about how to make money through the Public Lending Right, we recommended poetry activities for educators and young readers, we found some poetry recommendations for high school students and poetry-resistant readers, and we rounded up some of our favourite tips for making poetry a part of your day-to-day routine year-round!
  • We were thrilled to announce four major shortlists at the beginning of the month: our Pat Lowther Memorial Award, Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, Raymond Souster Award, and Sheri-D Wilson Golden Beret Award for spoken word. Find out which 21 poets made the lists here!
  • We also announced the six winners of our young poets’ prize, the Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize! In a delightful turn of events, the junior category was dominated by two sisters, and in the senior category, the same poet took second and third place. Read all the winning poems here!
  • Our 2017 poetry reading series, the #LCPChallenge, is going strong, and we used NPM to check in and see how yours is going! We’ve completed 9 of a hopeful 24 books. See what we’ve read so far here.
  • During National Poetry Month, we opened the registration to our annual poetry conference. Panels and events are also open to non-members, so check out the programming and register by May 18!
  • We were excited to celebrate Poem in Your Pocket on April 27, with 16 new poems! Poetry Ireland also join in on the #pocketpoem fun! You can read all of the poems individually on our Poem in Your Pocket page year-round.
  • National Broadsheet Contest winner Doyali Islam was interviewed on CBC about her winning poem, “cat and door,” and her personal poetic process.
  • TWUC and the League released two new writers’ how-to booklets during NPM, to guide writers through the process of self-publishing, as well as self-promotion!
  • At the beginning of April, we launched a brand new project featuring the poetry of our associate members! Fresh Voices is a new monthly series that highlights three poems from our amazing associate members, and we launched the first and second issues during National Poetry Month!

BEYOND THE LEAGUE

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