Poem in Your Pocket Day

Poem in Your Pocket Day is an international movement that encourages people to centre poetry within their daily interactions.

On PIYP Day, select a poem, carry it with you, and share it with others at schools, bookstores, libraries, parks, workplaces, coffee shops, street corners, and on social media using the hashtag #PocketPoem.

The 2023 Poem in Your Pocket Day Postcard collection is here!

This year’s Poem In Your Pocket Collection features poetry by: George Amabile, Manahil Bandukwala, Rae Crossman, Jannie Edwards, Y S Lee, Kyo Lee, D.A. Lockhart, Briana Lu, Anthony Purdy, Sneha Madhavan-Reese, Richard-Yves Sitoski, Michael V. Smith, Eleonore Schönmaier and Pujita Verma.

Read their poems below and share with others.

These poems are also available as audio recordings, in plain text and a printable booklet. To print and share from your home, check out the 2023 Poem In Your Pocket Day Booklet from LCP. 

Listen

Read

BOSRA, SYRIA 2009     for A and E George Amabile 1 We’re standing in a light breeze, in a field of poppies, white and red, their heads nodding and tossing beside the collapsed walls, broken columns with lengthening shadows behind them, and the wide road, paved with stones, that steered ancient wheels and hobnailed sandals back to Rome. 2 Today we’ve climbed to the top row of the Roman Amphitheatre. From here you can see most of the town, the ruins of the Roman baths, and the square, slender minaret of the Al-Omari mosque. Hushed voices draw our attention down to the stage, where students on a field trip are whispering urgently to a girl with long black hair. She shakes her head, backs away. But when they continue to plead, she relents, and begins to sing, in Latin: Ave maria, gratia plena… and as her pure, full voice rises, carried by the flawless acoustics of tiered stone, we hear another voice behind us, a muezzin’s intense tenor chanting the mid-afternoon call to prayer.
Skywater Manahil Bandukwala I am you in your jewel-domed reading room, I am you in your kayak skimming. — Phyllis Webb The sky was inverted. I called you in the bare yellow night. I am you against the river of clouds, I am you in an energy current shaking down the kitchen walls, you in the contrapuntal stream of two trees racing vertically away from the earth. The sea was inverted. The sun inverted. The boulders, electrons, all organic matter. I called you from the land that is now the sea. There is no becoming; I always was. Now all events are kisses, a softness in the morning before clarity settles in. You in the exhalations that clear out the day’s old dust, you, large enough to hold the sun. The vapour of knowing might be lost, the dream we never woke from. You, I am floating in saltwater in our sea that was once land. Originally published as “I love you, kiss me,” Plenitude, 2022
Your Trowel Rae Crossman I’m using your brick trowel today to prepare the soil for planting begonias along the base of your headstone my hand on the handle you held the steel blade cutting through the earth you lie under just as you cut slices of mortar from the mound on the board then spread the mud with a flourish along the top course of bricks ran a light furrow along the centre laid your philosophy down the row walls always plumb stories always on the level corners as square as your pride I’m using your brick trowel today I don’t have your wrist action or your arm’s rhythmic swing but I have your eye for straight spacing the begonias evenly tapping them down with the handle’s hard end firmly into the ready bed of loam
Stanza Jannie Edwards from Italian meaning room, stopping place Room through seasons. Room asleep. Room that’s shaken from the deep. Room that coughs and coughs and coughs. Room with plenty of enough. Room with maps and gears and traction. Room left stranded at the station. Room with extra bowls and bread. Room that argues with the dead. Room that’s lost its mother tongue. Room that keeps becoming young. Room with tides of debt and rumour. Room with tools to measure sorrow. Wired room. Haunted. Borrowed. Room of air. Room that hunkers in despair. Ruined room awash in moonlight. Secret room to harvest midnight. Room of mirrors. Room that simmers in between. Room that takes the shape of dreams. Room that sings through nerves of green. Room ablaze with itch and fire. Room that learns its own desire.
When Lucy clambered into the wardrobe Y S Lee I didn’t know what a wardrobe was, but I suddenly knew what a wardrobe was for. And for wardrobe, say also flame-flickered cave, attic-ladder, red ignition button. Say Soyuz rocket, solid propellant, antique compass, handheld zip line, over-wintered kindling, seven-league boots, Wright Brothers’ brainchild, a faultless Houdini. Say a Ming dynasty treasure ship laden with fireworks, lion’s roar, wind-carved water, zeal of zebras, faithful pilot light, whisper of blade on wild ice, tulip buds trembling for tomorrow, twelve-dog dogsled from Anchorage to Nome, heartbeat beacon winking at the end of the world, cloud-somersault of one hundred and eight thousand li, the line your cartwheeling heel draws upon the sky. Through cloaks and minks, I leapt again for the rapture of the fall.
The Red Light Reflected atop Roblin Lake D.A. Lockhart At night the peeperscome on strong and the red light above Roblin reflects as if a fresh blood drop on sheer water. Groans from behind the distant tree line follows the patrol of military transports. This night rests upon this sweet water playback of a Drizzy track pushed quietly over a Koreatown side street. Calm. Low love vibrations. Conceive of the right bars to hum, drop your lines upon silence. Whisper a percolating thanks into the night, loft them up to all thirteen heavens, pray that they rain down neon rays of stars we cannot yet decipher from background noise. Al, did you too peer into the sky and dream of the places you've been and have never wanted to let go of? How this life is a matter of adventure rather than pleasing others. Consider the scent of a lifetime of books, the weight of dust from Gibson Road settling upon mowed lawns, dying ash trees, sprouted tulips. Let us walk out to the mailbox, the wail of bagpipes behind us, toothpick clenched between grinding bicuspids. Against a lake that I serenade with Ovo tracks. Hold on, hold on. How two very different men can come to find solace, medicine in a hilltop lake and a single red light burning rather shimmering into night.
Triolet for When My Children Ask if I Believe in the Hindu Pantheon Sneha Madhavan-Reese What can I say about belief? What comes forth when myth meets history? A logical mind like mine might come to grief. What can I say about belief? Entering a temple, I feel such deep relief, comfort, belonging—it’s no mystery. What can I say about belief? What comes forth when myth meets history?
Ischemic Stroke Richard-Yves Sitoski I have come to love your beautiful confusions. So tumble, unroll yourself as a blanket on the grass. Let meadow dew make sense of imprecise precision. And when you can’t talk, sing: imprint your words on the twinkling leaves and let them fall in the yellow of your gentleness. I’ll rake them into lyrical piles, then sew them to your nightdress to rustle as you breathe, to sound the stumbling darkness and guide me, sure-footed only in my sleep.
Metaphor Michael V. Smith the cupped palm of my grandfather in the garden teaching me to curl my own beneath the raspberry and make my hand a bowl
Taiga Eleonore Schönmaier After the evacuation orders ended, you returned home to discover the forest reduced to black ash. This wasn’t surprising: insurmountable flames had reached hot and high. The fire crept to the very edge of all your memories. Unexpected were the green-gentle shoots that grew so soon after: the forest already, slowly starting to rise up, feeding from the ash.
Tham Luang Cave Rescue Pujita Verma moments my fingers hover over your unopened messages, things I want to tell you become my monsoon. I finally saw the film. you know the one about the trapped soccer team & the world that swarmed to the cave to pull honey from the heart’s wound? that one. true story. I was making tea when divers first discovered the bodies. I mean, the boys (they were found alive) & I was licking gold syrup off my fingers. been years since the divers brought them back (alive, yes, but conscious? not exactly) & I can’t stop thinking about the boys sticking to higher ground & they kept climbing further & you told me how long it took, for the fields to finally forgive the farmers, for letting them flood. (I wonder if you know I’ve been treading water. you are in growing season). families were camped in the mouth of the hive & others split. dared to step into the stomach. you tell me years ago your father followed the allegory, as divers pressed between two walls & found footing to climb further. I think necessity paves the way for all the strength someone could ever have. there’s so much I want to tell you, & nothing that I need to. searching for you might just cave inside of me. everything always ends with the body.
birdbrained by Briana Lu am i the red tint window pane or am i the bird that hit it? this summer, featuring awakened glare in the synthetic typewriter and feelings of awful electronity. i think she was dead before she even made contact but all i knew was the windshield crack when she struck gold. maybe she practiced radical self love. maybe she aimed for sunfire. body and environment is an extension of the mind and maybe that was fucking ominous. i’ve got her in my hands, gloved and all as if afraid to melt into a synthesis of prophetic carnage. it’s a symptom of psychosis, really— not knowing how to wield the transhumanal ice pick despite having been raised by it. she’s weeping. maybe she doesn’t know either. cosmic infinitesimal feeling placebo in pianist hands, tickling ivories demanding to be freed. my skin is porcelain, cold to the touch and she is liminal warmth, heart beating out of chest and i’m wondering if her blood might just soar. it’s all wingless enormity in childhood shoebox crafts and prayers in secular mouthwash— encores in sewers and i think i’m going to be sick. crisis hotline sings “My Heart Will Go On”. i wash my hands and go back inside. this summer, featuring awakened glare in the synthetic typewriter and feelings of awful electronity. i think i looked up and felt her heart stop.
Asian Girl Inspired by Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” by Kyo Lee read more korean books; read more english books; memorise one hundred english words everyday; don’t bleed out your mother tongue unless you want to be some white-washed gyopo; here’s how to sculpt rice flour into crescent moons; here’s how to fold rice flour into bird eggs; always get better grades than your friends; always get better grades than my friends’ children; always get better grades because we don’t pay $20,000 for you to go to school here so you can be average; greet your elders by bowing your head; get double eye-lid surgery; don’t wear eyeliner, you're going to look even chinkier; here’s how to whiten your skin with a cushion; here’s how to look the same as everybody else; when you see something in the street, avoid eye contact and walk faster; remember, we don’t have the privilege of helping others; here's how to cook rice in the steam pot; here's how to cook rice in the microwave; here's how to cook rice in the rice cooker; here's how to cook rice with a kettle; here's how to cook the perfect rice; here's how to make a sandwich for school so the white kids don’t think you’re too asian; sprout like a lotus blossom: beautiful and exotic and on the verge of drowning; don’t hold your chopstick like that; here’s how to make kimchi; here’s how to make kimchi for white people; here are all the different kimchis to make in each season: summer for tender yeolmu leaves, the winter for snow-white radishes; always tap on the watermelon before you buy it; memorise the names of bts members so white people accept that you’re a korean; but what should the watermelon sound like?; don’t talk back to your elders; here’s how to stay quiet; here, store all your anger in this moon-hangari and swallow it over and over again; here’s how to complain about your husband to asian ladies; never speak well of your own life, people don’t want to hear about the good things; learn to give thanks to the bones of the turkey, we don’t get chuseok off as a holiday; here's how to say annyeonghaseyo to someone you don’t like; here's how to say annyeonghaseyo to your elders; here’s how to teach a white person how to say annyeonghaseyo; here’s how to be a model minority; stop complaining, would you rather be dark-skinned?; here’s how to carry the weight of your country on your shoulders; laugh politely when white people ask if you eat dogs; laugh politely when white people ask if you have coronavirus; laugh politely if white people ask if you’re related to kim jeong un; laugh politely when white people; always behave as if you’re representing all koreans; you don’t want white people to think koreans act asian; never use a dishwasher; never buy things unless they’re on sale; here’s how to be more white; here’s how to be more asian; sometimes be asian, sometimes be white; but which one am i supposed to be when?; you’ll know.
Toulouse’s uncharacteristic heat Kevin Andrew Heslop brings seventy grandmothers’ begonias from the house to the balcony out of season.

Read the 2023 Poem In Your Pocket poems in plain text.

Poem in Your Pocket Day – falling always sometime in National Poetry Month – is an international movement that encourages people to centre poetry within their daily interactions. On PIYP Day, select a poem, carry it with you, and share it with others at schools, bookstores, libraries, parks, workplaces, coffee shops, street corners, and on social media using the hashtag #PocketPoem.

This annual initiative is organized by the Academy of American Poets, celebrated with a free downloadable PDF booklet containing contemporary American and – since the League joined forces in 2016 – Canadian poetry to share.

Check out the Academy’s 2023 Poem In Your Pocket Booklet

For your French pocket poem needs, check out La poésie partout for La Journée du poème à porter.

Poem in Your Pocket Day 2023 is Thursday, April 27. 

Ways to Celebrate

It’s easy to carry a poem, share a poem, or start your own Poem in Your Pocket Day event. Visit the Academy’s website for a full history of the program and other materials. Here are some ideas of how you might get involved:

  • Start a “poems for pockets” giveaway in your school or workplace
  • Urge local businesses to offer discounts for those carrying poems
  • Post pocket-sized verses in public places
  • Memorize a poem
  • Start a street team to pass out poems in your community
  • Distribute bookmarks with your favourite lines of poetry
  • Post lines from your favourite poem on your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Tumblr
  • Send a poem to a friend
  • Share your favourite poem on social media and use #PoemInYourPocket or #PocketPoem
  • Write your favourite poem on a sticky note to put on your fridge or cubicle at work. Or, if you’re working from home, add a poem to your email footer for the day.
  • Make your pocket poem the background on your phone or share it in a group message with others who may also want to participate.
  • Create a video of your favourite spoken-word piece or have a virtual poetry night where everyone shares their favourite poems aloud.
  • Plan a poetry exchange with your household, or virtually with a group of friends. For an in-person exchange, everyone writes their favourite poem on a piece of paper and puts it into a bucket. The poems are shuffled, and you draw a poem at random and real aloud.
  • Embrace the artist within. Type up your favourite poem using a typewriter or typewriter app. You can make calligraphy or word art that showcases your chosen poem to share with a friend or family member. If you’d like your pocket poem to be a more permanent display, you can even decide to turn it into wall art! Create your word art on canvas or find a fun picture frame and hang up your poem for everyone to see. Consider making this an annual tradition with friends. You can create a new piece of wall art every year for your pocket poems.

About – 2023 Poem In Your Pocket Poets

George Amabile has published twelve books and has had work in over a hundred national and international venues, including The New Yorker, Poetry (Chicago), American Poetry Review, Botteghe Oscure, The Globe and Mail, The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse, Saturday Night,, Poetry Australia, Sur (Buenos Aires), Poetry Canada Review, and Canadian Literature. His most recent publications are a long poem, Dancing, with Mirrors (Porcupine’s Quill, 2011), Small Change (Fiction, Libros Libertad, 2011) and Martial Music (poetry, Signature Editions, 2016) all of which have won the prestigious Bressani Award, and an International Crime novel, Operation Stealth Seed (Signature Editions, 2019) which won the Michael von Rooy Award for Genre Fiction.

Manahil Bandukwala is a writer and visual artist originally from Pakistan and now settled in Canada. In 2021, she was shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award. She works as Coordinating Editor for Arc Poetry Magazine, and is Digital Content Editor for Canthius. She is a member of Ottawa-based collaborative writing group VII. Her project Reth aur Reghistan is a multidisciplinary exploration of folklore from Pakistan interpreted through poetry and sculpture. She holds an MA in English from the University of Waterloo. Her debut poetry collection is MONUMENT (Brick Books). See her work at manahilbandukwala.com.

Living on the Haldimand Tract in Kitchener, Ontario, Rae Crossman writes poetry both for the page and for oral performance. He has published poems in literary magazines and dramatized them on theatre stages, in classrooms, and around campfires on canoe trips. Working with dancers, musicians, and visual artists, he is particularly interested in the collaborative process of creativity. Joint projects include storytelling, choral compositions, and theatrical pieces set in natural environments.

Jannie Edwards is a writer, editor and teacher who lives in Amiskwacîwâskahikan/Edmonton on Treaty 6 / Métis Region #4 lands. Her most recent collaboration is the chapbook Learning Their Names: Letters from the Home Place (Collusion Books) with visual artist Sydney Lancaster.

Kevin Andrew Heslop is. Debut: the correct fury of your why is a mountain (Gordon Hill Press, Fall 2021). Lately:six feet | between us(McIntosh Gallery, Winter 2022); Revelations: Gathie Falk (Centred Magazine, Winter 2023). Forthcoming: in medias res (Westland Gallery, Spring 2023); mo(u)vements. (Astoria Pictures, Summer 2023); you are not required to complete the task; neither are you free to desist from it (Rose Garden Press, Spring 2024). Supported in part by the London Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, and Canada Council for the Arts.

Y.S. Lee is the 2022 winner of CV2’s Foster Poetry Prize. Her work appears/is forthcoming in EVENT, The Malahat Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, The Literary Review of Canada, and other journals. A lyric essay, “Tek tek”, was shortlisted for the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize, and her fiction includes the award-winning YA mystery series The Agency (Candlewick Press). She lives in a place we’re learning to call Katarokwi.

D.A. Lockhart is the author of multiple collections of poetry and short fiction. His work has been shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award, the Indiana Author’s Award for Fiction, Relit Awards, and First Nations Communities READ Award. He is a graduate of the Indiana University – Bloomington MFA in Creative Writing program where he held a Neal-Marshall Graduate Fellowship in Creative Writing. He is pùkuwànkoamimëns (Turtle Clan) of the Moravian of the Thames First Nation. Lockhart currently resides at Waawiiyaatanong and Pelee Island where he is the publisher at Urban Farmhouse Press.

Sneha Madhavan-Reese is the author of the poetry collections Observing the Moon (Hagios Press, 2015) and Elementary Particles (forthcoming from Brick Books, Fall 2023). Her writing has appeared in publications around the world, including The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2016. She lives with her family in Ottawa.

Eleonore Schönmaier’s newest collection is Field Guide to the Lost Flower of Crete (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021). Wavelengths of Your Song (MQUP) was published in German translation as Wellenlängen deines Liedes (parasitenpresse, 2020). Dust Blown Side of the Journey (MQUP) was a finalist for the Eyelands Book Awards 2020 (Greece). Her poetry has been widely anthologized in the United States and Canada including in Best Canadian Poetry. Multiple international composers have set her poems to music. Born and raised in a northern wilderness settlement she witnessed multiple forest fires, and once her community was airlifted to safety. She’s a former northern nurse. eleonoreschonmaier.com

Richard-Yves Sitoski (he/him) is a songwriter, performance poet and the 2019-2023 Poet Laureate of Owen Sound, on the territory of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Arc, Prairie Fire, Train, The Fiddlehead, Bywords.ca, and elsewhere. 2021 John Newlove Award winner, 2022 Don Gutteridge Award winner (2nd place). His most recent works are No Sleep ‘til Eden (Ginger Press, 2020), an augmented reality collection of poems on the environment, and the chapbook How to Be Human (Bywords.ca, 2022). He is co-editor, with Penn Kemp, of Poems in Response to Peril: An Anthology in Support of Ukraine (Pendas Productions/Laughing Raven Press, 2021).

Michael V. Smith is writer, performer, and filmmaker living in Kelowna, BC. HIs most recent work is the feature film, The Floating Man, currently touring festivals around the world. Watch for his new poetry collection, Queers Like Me, out with Book*hug Press in Fall 2023. Michael teaches at UBC Okanagan.

Pujita Verma is an Indo-Canadian Poet & Illustrator. She was Mississauga’s Youth Poet Laureate (2018-2020), a Poetry In Voice National Finalist, and was recently longlisted for Palette Poetry’s Love & Eros Prize. Her work embraces themes of resilience and silence, culture and connection, memory, and matters of the heart. Pujita recently completed her BA in Political Science at Western University and works for the humanitarian organization War Child Canada.

Visit National Poetry Month to discover even more ways to celebrate poetry in April!

Dig through the archives! We feature new Canadian poets in each annual booklet, put together in partnership with Academy of American Poets so there’s lots to look back on. View, share, or copy and paste any Poem in Your Pocket selections!

PIYP Day 2022 / 2021 / 2020 / 2019 / 2018 / 2017 / 2016

Poem In Your Pocket Day Contest

Now closed. This contest was open in Fall 2022 and will reopen in Fall 2023.

See all LCP Contests and Awards

The League is excited to announce that submissions  are now open for the Poem In Your Pocket Day contest for inclusion in the Poem in Your Pocket Day Postcards. Ten (10) Selected winning poets and their poems will receive $300, the full Poem Postcard Pack, and will be invited to provide an audio recording of their selected poem. LCP Members are invited to enter the contest free of charge and non-members are asked to include a $10 entry fee.

We can’t wait to stuff our pockets with your poetry!

Submission Guidelines: 

  • This contest accepts poems in English. For French Poem in Your Pocket content, visit La Poesie Partout
  • Open to poets at any career level (professional, emerging, first-time, etc.)
  • Submit only one (1) poem with no identifying information (submissions will be judged blind).
    • Poem must not exceed 40 lines.
    • Poem content must be appropriate for readers of all ages (PIYP Postcards are distributed in schools).
  • Poems cannot be previously published.
  • This contest has an entry fee of $10 for submissions from the general public.
    • LCP Members are invited to enter the contest free of charge.
    • If you are unable to pay the contest fee, please send email to admin@poets.ca
  • Eligible to Canadian poets, poets living and working in Canada, as well as Indigenous, Inuit and Métis poets who may not identify as Canadian but live in the region known colonially as Canada.

Meet the Jurors:

We are delighted to have Frances Boyle and Keith Inman selecting the 2023 PIYP poems.