National Poetry Month

  • It’s Rhyme Time in Seattle: Poetry events around town

    It’s National Poetry Month once again, and Seattle’s got it covered. First of all, Seattle Public Library offers many opportunities to write, read, and hear poetry all month long at various branches around the city: The winning haikus from our city-wide Haiku contest are posted here on our website, with one featured each day through April… Continue reading

  • Haiku Hullabaloo: Enter the Library’s Poetry Contest

    Isn’t it interesting that you can find books about haiku on the shelves of our library, but not one book of haikus about libraries? Let’s show the world what we’re made of! In celebration of National Poetry Month  (April), National Library Week (April 14-20) and National Haiku Day (April 17), we’re having an all-ages haiku… Continue reading

  • Beautiful in the Mouth: On the Reading and Writing of Poetry

     What is a poem on a page but a Field of Light and Shadow where For Love of Common of Words, A Radiant Curve catches 19 Varieties of Gazelle gazing into Darkening Water becoming Human Dark with Sugar going Heart First into the Forest Meaning a Cloud, Torn Awake is coming to be torch song… Continue reading

  • Everybody has a favorite poem — or two!

    Maybe it is that e.e. cummings poem that starts Spring is like a perhaps hand (which comes carefully out of Nowhere)… Or it could be an Emily Dickinson poem that begins The brain — is wider than the sky… Was it a Yeats poem you remember? I went out to the hazel wood/ Because a… Continue reading

  • Poetry in Fremont

    In April our minds turn to poetry. This coming Saturday, April 2, the Washington Poets Association and The Seattle Public Library will bring three wonderful poets to read at the Fremont Branch Library: Joan Swift, Dennis Caswell, and Peter Pereira… Here are their thoughts as April approaches. Joan Swift says of poetry: At night, while trying… Continue reading

  • A poem by one of Seattle’s many poets

    For several years, the Northeast branch has offered a Poetry Contest during April for National Poetry Month. 288 kids, teens and adults participated this year and the Awards Ceremony was held on Tuesday, May 19.  The youngest poet was four years old and the oldest was 84 – it’s quite a multigenerational program! Please visit… Continue reading

  • Got Poems?

    April is more than just the month when sun tries to return to the Seattle skies. It’s also National Poetry Month. What does poetry mean to you? For some of us, we recall that haiku writing assignment in elementary school. Then there’s that familiar and famous line from Robert Frost of “Two roads diverged in a wood,… Continue reading