8+ Ways to Engage with Poetry

A Guide for National Poetry Month

Since January 20, I’ve had Wendell Berry’s poem, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” stuck to my refrigerator door and pinned to my work bulletin board. When I stand filling up my water bottle or pause after sending an email, I read a line or two. “Be joyful/ though you have considered all the facts.” It’s become an anchor and a needed, daily reminder in these times. Looking back, poetry has long accompanied me.

A copy of Wendell Berry’s “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” pinned to the bulletin board at my desk.

In third grade, we were assigned some poetry memorization. I don’t remember the poem I memorized, but I do remember the William Rossa Cole poem about a banana and a spelling bee, which was the poem my friend, Jessica, chose. (I’ll spare you my recitation.) In those days, there was a lot of Shel Silverstein. Was there a child in America in the 1990s who wasn’t reading Where the Sidewalk Ends? (Falling up was my personal favorite.) As a middle schooler, in what was perhaps my literalism era, I loved “The Road Not Taken” and “What is Success?” And like all good moody teenage girls, I was enamored with Sylvia Plath in high school, and my commonplace book became one of my most prized possessions. As a college student, I plugged my iPod into my Dell laptop each morning to download the latest episode of The Writer’s Almanac from iTunes.¹

Later, when completing my student teaching in a fifth grade public school classroom, I had absolute pleasure of crafting a poetry unit for my students. We read Love that Dog by Sharon Creech and All the Small Poems by Valerie Worth. For the rest of my life, I will remember the joy on the face of a boy named Patrick as we read about the lazy, lolling dog.

April is National Poetry Month, and I’m here to encourage you to engage poetry this month, whether you enjoy poetry typically or not.

You might be tempted to dismiss this admonition after listening to me wax poetic (see what I did there?) for several hundred words, convinced that you’re not that kind of poetry person. But I don’t believe you have to be a lifelong poetry reader to learn to enjoy it. What’s more, the further we’ve moved into 2025 and all its sociopolitical upheaval, the more the United States devolves into fascism, the more convinced I am that we need poets, and we need poetry.

We need more people with expanded imaginations, who attend to our circumstances and surroundings differently, and who use language as a tool for creation and resistance. They might use metaphor and alliteration well, but they might also pave the way toward new conceptions of a healthy society; provide new ways of talking about oppression and freedom; and teach us to find truth, beauty, and goodness in all of life. They might, dare I say, help us find our way down a road less travelled.

“Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable.” —Carl Sandburg

So even if your last experience with poetry was Robert Frost in sixth grade, maybe give poetry another try this month. If you’re an avid poetry reader, I hope this list gives you some new and fresh ideas.

Ways to Engage Poetry for National Poetry Month:

1. Subscribe to a poetry Substack.

• The Rabbit Room publishes a dedicated poetry newsletter. A paid subscription gets you more poetry and helps pay the poets whose new work is shared there, but many poems are available to read for free.

• Poet Maggie Smith with musings on the writer’s life, but I particularly enjoy when she annotates a poem. It’s such an interesting behind-the-scenes look into her work, and to the intentional, careful thought good writers employ.

• Our friend Tania Runyan has recently been writing a number of punchy poems about our contemporary situation, written in the voice of Jesus. “I do not claim to speak for Him,” she notes, “though I certainly experience a sense of joy and intimacy by imagining what He would say.” Don’t miss her Substack: Poet Jesus.

• Part-Time Poets shares a monthly collection of poetry from a variety of female writers. Themes often include family life, femininity, faith and doubt, and the gifts and travails of ordinary life. It’s hard to read these and not see the poetic inspiration everywhere in my own life.

• If you want to learn more about classic poetry from a scholar and professor, check out Karen Swallow Prior’s Substack. She recently finished a series on Paradise Lost, and has also explored George Herbert, John Milton, Christina Rossetti, and more.
  

2. Download our April poetry calendar.

I collected 30 poems with spiritual themes, both classic and contemporary and representing a diverse group of poets. Keep it open on your computer this month and enjoy a poem-a-day!

3. Try poetry on audio.

While reading poetry is great, listening to poetry brings it to life in a whole other way. When you feel doubtful about your ability to comprehend poetry, listening allows you to inhabit the poem in a different way—feeling the rhythm, hearing the sound, listening to the poet’s voice.

• Download audiobooks from Libro.fm or Libby. One collection I recently enjoyed and highly recommend on audio is Clint Smith’s Above Ground. Hearing the poems read in his own voice really brought them to life.

• While Spotify offers audiobooks now, but they also have a variety of poetry available to listen to within their music library. Check out a playlist of Wendell Berry readings, or this collection of classic poems (some with musical accompaniment).
  

4. Speaking of listening, check out a poetry podcast.

• You may already be familiar with Pádraig Ó Tuama’s Poetry Unbound podcast, produced by On Being Studios. It is well-worth a listen, and lucky for us, it is not the only poetry podcast out there!

• The Slowdown is a podcast made in partnership with The Poetry Foundation, and currently hosted by Major Jackson. (Earlier seasons were hosted by Ada Limon.) Similar in style to Poetry Unbound but shared every weekday (!), Jackson shares a poem and a brief reflection.

• Poetry for All is a great podcast for really learning about poetry and poets. The episodes are longer, and so space is given to really dig in to the history, context, and details.

  

  A couple other poetry collections I have loved.

5. Explore the poetry category on The Englewood Review of Books website.

Every week for years, we’ve curated classic and contemporary poetry to accompany the church lectionary, making it easy for churches and individuals to incorporate poetry into corporate worship or personal devotional time (You can find our selections to accompany this Sunday’s readings from the Narrative and Revised Common Lectionaries here). We also have guides to poets like Mary Oliver, Rumi, Joy Harjo, and Emily Dickinson.

6. Write your own poetry!

• tspoetry is a community of poets and poetry-lovers. They share poetry on Substack, but on their website’s blog they offer a weekly poetry prompt with examples.

• Try your hand at haiku. The short length and specific format make it an easy form to try.

• Grab a newspaper, magazine, or other piece of text and make a blackout poem (a la Austin Kleon.)
  

7. Attend a local poetry event.

What’s happening in your area? Here in Indianapolis, our public library is hosting poetry workshops and events all month long, and local bookstores are hosting poetry readings. Poetry + community is a potent combination.

8. Read the Psalms.

If you’re a person of faith who has yet to be convinced of the value of engaging poetry, it might be worth remembering that a fair portion of the Jewish and Christian scriptures are written in poetic form. Consider National Poetry Month a good reason to dig into those portions of the Bible particularly and see what you might uncover.

In an interview with Krista Tippet for On Being, Mary Oliver once said, “Poetry…wishes for a community—it’s a community ritual, certainly….It’s a giving. It’s always—it’s a gift. It’s a gift to yourself, but it’s a gift to anybody who has a hunger for it.”

This month, may we develop a hunger for poetry and community, and may it be a gift to us.

Don’t forget: You can grab a free copy of our April calendar of spiritual poetry right here.

1. Does this sentence make any sense at all to someone born after 2000?