Resources
Poetry
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
The poem in each column is brief and will be enjoyable and enlightening to readers of newspapers and online publications. Each week, a new column will be posted. Registered publications will receive new columns by email. Our archive of previous columns is also available for publication.
The Writer’s Almanac educates, entertains and inspires listeners with literary history and poetry related to each day of the week. It celebrates the birthdays and works of poets, writers, composers, philosophers and historical figures. Host Garrison Keillor closes each show by reading a diverse selection of poetry, from Keats and Shelley to Mother Goose.
Poetry 180 is designed to make it easy for students to hear or read a poem on each of the 180 days of the school year. I have selected the poems you will find here with high school students in mind. They are intended to be listened to, and I suggest that all members of the school community be included as readers. A great time for the readings would be following the end of daily announcements over the public address system.
The Favorite Poem Project is dedicated to celebrating, documenting and encouraging poetry’s role in Americans’ lives. Robert Pinsky, the 39th Poet Laureate of the United States, founded the Favorite Poem Project shortly after the Library of Congress appointed him to the post in 1997.
During the one-year open call for submissions, 18,000 Americans wrote to the project volunteering to share their favorite poems — Americans from ages 5 to 97, from every state, of diverse occupations, kinds of education and backgrounds.
Recitation and performance are exciting current trends in poetry. There has been a resurgence of poetry as an oral art form, as seen in the slam poetry movement and the immense popularity of hip-hop music. Poetry Out Loud builds on that momentum by inviting the dynamic aspects of slam poetry, spoken word, and theater into the English class.
The National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation have partnered with state arts agencies of the United States to support Poetry Out Loud, which encourages the nation’s youth to learn about great poetry through memorization and recitation. This program helps students master public speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about their literary heritage.
Storytelling
This I Believe is an international project engaging people in writing and sharing essays describing the core values that guide their daily lives. More than 90,000 of these essays, written by people from all walks of life, are archived here on our website, heard on public radio, chronicled through our books, and featured in weekly podcasts. The project is based on the popular 1950s radio series of the same name hosted by Edward R. Murrow.
Radio Diaries works with people to document their own lives for public radio: teenagers, seniors, prison inmates and others whose voices are rarely heard. We help people share their stories—and their lives—in their own words, creating documentaries that are powerful, surprising, intimate and timeless.
Diarists become reporters of their own lives. They conduct interviews, keep an audio journal, and record the sounds of daily life—usually collecting over 30 hours of raw tape. We collaborate with each reporter, editing the material into radio documentaries for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.
The Moth, a not-for-profit storytelling organization, was founded in New York in 1997 by poet and novelist George Dawes Green, who wanted to recreate in New York the feeling of sultry summer evenings on his native St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, where he and a small circle of friends would gather to spin spellbinding tales on his friend Wanda’s porch. After moving to New York, George missed the sense of connection he had felt sharing stories with his friends back home, and he decided to invite a few friends over to his New York apartment to tell and hear stories. Thus the first “Moth” evening took place in his living room. Word of these captivating story nights quickly spread, and The Moth moved to bigger venues in New York. Today, The Moth conducts eight ongoing programs and has brought more than 3,000 live stories to over 100,000 audience members.
Stories on Stage presents live dramatic readings of literature by professional actors in a theatrical setting. Modeled on the highly successful Selected Shorts program out of New York, Stories on Stage provides an opportunity for Chicago-area artists and audiences to participate in and experience this special merging of the literary and dramatic arts.
Each Stories on Stage program features three or four stories sharing a common theme. Both established writers and new voices are represented by works originating from published collections, magazines, and literary journals. Programs have featured work by a wide variety of authors, including masters such as Raymond Carver, Edith Wharton, James Joyce, and Eudora Welty; newer voices, including Edwidge Danticat, Andrea Lee, Rick Moody, and Emily Prager; and local authors Elizabeth Berg, Sharon Solwitz, Sandra Cisneros, Maxine Chernoff, and Michael Anania.
