Photo of Jasper Johns' map of the USA, courtesy of wallyg (flickr.com)
Taking the “national” part of National Poetry Month literally this year, we have tried to collect an entire country’s worth of poems. But we couldn’t do it all ourselves. We drafted a few of our favorite poets to help us commission all these poems. Our invited poets each wrote a poem, then invited another poet from across state lines to write a poem in response…and so on to create a poetry chain mail of sorts. Call it “poet-sourcing.”
And emphasizing the “month” in National Poetry Month, we’ll be posting poems from the NPM project throughout April. YARN will be announcing the new poets each week on our Facebook page and Twitter stream. To get the latest updates, “like” or “follow” us to find out when new poems get posted on the YARN website. We’re also tracking the poems on a Google map here, so you can watch our poets’ progress. Enjoy the journey across America (and watch for a surprise poem from a U.S. Territory)!
For more details on this incredible project, see Colleen’s NPM kick-off blog and go to the first installment of poems, starting with C. Denby Swanson of Texas.
