November 2018

I posted this first in August 2014 and it is still a great resource

August 2014

No, for a change this is not about “A Prompt A Day For Bee” :-)! But it is about your poetry kick of new and old poets given by the Academy of American Poets every day. I have signed up a few months ago for their Poem-A-Day newsletter as their blurb really tempted me: “Through Poem-a-Day, we present original, previously unpublished poems by our country’s most talented poets throughout the week and classic poems on the weekends.” And then I forgot all about it. The few times I checked my emails I just deleted the email I got from them without having a look at it. What a waste of great poetry I now have to say. Am not sure what made me change my mind. Maybe I am growing up a little and are more organised. Or I have started to use micro-habits :-). The micro-habit being to check my e-mail accounts if possible daily, but if not, to do a clean up on Monday mornings and check out what’s in there. That has been a revelation: The poems they send out are brilliant. No, I do not like all of them. Some are quite strange and some do not respond to me at all. But that is the way with poetry: You just do not like all of it. But they are certainly of great quality and make me think about my own poetry writing and make me experiment with my words much more. I especially like the fact that they introduce classic English poems at the weekends. Being educated in Germany I, of course, have read Shakespeare’s Sonnets but that is about it. And I was certainly not introduced to modern poets. I guess the ’80s were not exactly a great time for poetry anyway. That came back in the ’90s with poetry slams. Never mind, today you can have it all :-). If you are not convinced then have a look here: This is the Poem-A-Day page which lets you see the latest poems sent out to the subscribers if you scroll down to the bottom of the page. And then just subscribe and have fun.