National Poetry Month
- Dawn Travers
- Apr 21, 2023
- 3 min read
Updated: May 20, 2023
April is a month where we celebrate the unique and soulful form of writing, poetry. This has been a celebration in Canada since 2008 where poets and enthusiasts can focus on this cherished art form. This year's poetry theme is joy.
What can you do to celebrate during the month of April? To start, visit your local library and check out their poetry collection. You can also head to the League of Canadian Poets' website and see what virtual programs and events are happening. They offer unique programs and provide inspiration to poets all year long. They also showcase past years' poetry themes.
National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo dedicates April as poetry month. Give yourself a challenge to write during the month and try and meet your writing goal.
Essa Public Library has several great books in our collections. I'd recommend the following:
Rupi Kaur constantly embraces growth, and in home body, she walks readers through a reflective and intimate journey visiting the past, the present, and the potential of the self. home body is a collection of raw, honest conversations with oneself – reminding readers to fill up on love, acceptance, community, family, and embrace change. Illustrated by the author, themes of nature and nurture, light and dark, rest here.
I dive into the well of my body
And end up in another world
Everything I need
Already exists in me
There’s no need
To look anywhere else
– Home
Joni Mitchell is one of the greatest songwriters of the late 20th century. For over forty years her powerful lyrics have compelled listeners to dig deeper. This one of a kind collection finally allows even her most passionate fans to do just that. Gathered Light: The Poetry of Joni Mitchell’s Songs includes more than fifty original contributions by acclaimed writers such as Wally Lamb and Fred Wah, as well as many of Mitchell’s long-time friends and creative collaborators. These diverse voices celebrate Mitchell’s poetic craft and the profound impact of her words on their lives. Joni Mitchell has endorsed these explorations, and Gathered Light is the collection that fans of this legendary artist have been waiting for.
Out of the city
And down to the seaside
To sun on my shoulders and wind in my hair
But sandcastles crumble
And hunger is human
And humans are hungry for worlds they can't share
My dreams with the seagulls fly
Out of reach out of cry
- Song To A Seagull
In these pages, Oliver shares the wonder of dawn, the grace of animals, and the transformative power of attention. Whether studying the leaves of a tree or mourning her adored dog, Percy, she is ever patient in her observations and open to the teachings contained in the smallest of moments.
Our most precious chronicler of physical landscape, Oliver opens our eyes to the nature within, to its wild and its quiet. With startling clarity, humor, and kindness, A Thousand Mornings explores the mysteries of our daily experience.
As long as you're dancing, you can
break the rules.
Sometimes breaking the rules is just
extending the rules.
Sometimes there are no rules.
- Three Things to Remember
Requited or unrequited, to love is to move between homecoming and exile, between the presence and absence of our beloved as well as ourselves. In this collection, human desire pulls with the force and rhythm of a sea tide, emerging from and receding into mysteries larger than any individual life. The book begins with the reverential title poem and concludes with four works that reflect the power of place to shape revelation; the way stone and sky and birdsong can point the way home. Whether tracing the sensual devotion of bodily presence or the painful heartbreak of impermanence, the poems keep faith with love's appearances and disappearances, and the promises we make and break on its behalf.
Lark song and my own brave sun lament
joined with it, reformed in the music of the wind
saying, I will love and lose again,
and love and still love again. The word Always,
carried as a promise in the wind.
- Lark Song and Letting Go
--Dawn Travers--
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