Ways you can celebrate National Poetry Month

To couch or not to couch, that is the question...

Morgan: Speaking of high-class literature, T.S. Eliot, in his poem, “The Waste Land,” wrote that “April is the cruellest month.” Well, Eliot, April is also National Poetry Month. This week, we’re going to share some ways you can celebrate and engage with poetry in and around Baltimore.

Audrey: Breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and... Oh, hi. Sorry, did someone say “April is the cruellest month”? I just ran with it. But, oh my, look at the time, is it really April already? National Poetry Month is here!

National Poetry Month is organized by the American Academy of Poets (check them out at poets.org), and you can use their website to find all sorts of fantastically poetic events across the country.

M: You don’t even have to venture too far to celebrate poetry. There are a lot of events happening in the city this month.

On Tuesday, April 25, the Enoch Pratt Free Library is hosting a reading by two Maryland-based poets (including Elizabeth Hazen, who graduated from the Writing Seminars program). It’s great to support local, contemporary poets, so definitely check this event out.

On Saturday, April 29, Red Emma’s is hosting my favorite event of the year: the Baltimore Youth Poetry Grand Slam. It’s an evening full of creative energy and raw emotion where 12 teenagers perform original poems. They will be competing to represent Baltimore at the 20th Annual Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival this summer.

I went to this event last year and was blown away by the passion and poise of all the poets. Though they’re young, the performances are often intense and steeped in social and political issues. Make sure to get there early; Seating is limited, and the bookstore will most likely be jam packed.

A: Sounds awesome. For those of you willing to travel, on Thursday, April 20th, Claudia Rankine and Nathaniel Mackey will be accepting the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry at the Library of Congress down in D.C.

The prize honors Rankine’s book, Citizen: An American Lyric, and Mackey’s lifetime achievement. The reading will be free and open to the public at the James Madison Memorial Building. (It’s walking distance from Union Station!)

M: If you can’t make it to any of these events, there are still ways to interact with poetry on your own. Print out your favorite poems (or some of your own!) or grab a poetry anthology and host a casual reading with friends.

Keeping with the idea of celebrating local poets, you could always take part in a dramatic reading of “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe, but also check out Lucille Clifton and Linda Pastan, who were former Poet Laureates of Maryland.

A: So, why is all this important? Why are we telling you not just to go out and read some poems but to go drag yourself out of bed and off the couch to listen to them? Well, because listening to poetry is simply something else. Sadly I can’t prove this to you here, through text and on paper, but think about it.

I’m not condemning reading printed poems — far from it — but let’s not forget that poetry started out as a spoken art.

Here’s the thing: Hearing a poem you’ve never heard before recited across a laden brunch table and a mostly empty mimosa pitcher, you’re kept in suspense of the shape of the poem, which is immediately evident on the page.

You have to hear the rhyme scheme rather than just to see the repeated -ation, -ation, -ation, -ation and wait for the sound to follow.

When you get to the last lines, where the poet takes your world apart for a minute, you don’t have to split your mind between parsing the punctuation and line breaks, you can just let yourself understand what the art has achieved.