Happy National Poetry Month!

It’s time once again to read, write, share, and simply indulge your love for poetry in every way. I’m happy to be back rounding everyone up this year and look forward to checking in with all of you throughout April.

New to National Poetry Month and wondering about ways to celebrate? Visit the NPM webpage at The Academy of American Poets (poets.org) for a cool list of activities, initiatives and resources. You can learn about Poem in Your Pocket Day (April 10), sign up for Poem-a-Day to receive poems in your inbox, and review 30 Ways to Celebrate NPM online, at home, in the classroom, or at readings/events near you. Do as much, or as little, as you please. Just enjoy!

The 2025 poster features an excerpt from “Gate A-4”, a poem by former Young People’s Poet Laureate and Academy Chancellor Naomi Shihab Nye, as well as artwork by New York Times-bestselling author and illustrator Christy Mandin. 

Mandin was selected by Scholastic—the global children’s publishing, education, and media company—to create the artwork for this year’s poster as part of a National Poetry Month collaboration with the Academy of American Poets.

A lesson plan featuring Nye’s poem is available through the Academy’s Teach This Poem newsletter. Sign up for Teach This Poem to receive this additional educational resource and bring the poster to life for National Poetry Month. You can download a free PDF of this poster here.

Now, here’s a list of what some kidlit bloggers are doing. If you’re also celebrating National Poetry Month with a special project or blog event, or know of anyone else who is, please email me at: readermail (at) jamakimrattigan (dot) com, so I can add the information to this Roundup. Thanks, and have a beautiful, inspiring, uplifting, productive, and memorable April!

*

Hooray, it’s Progressive Poem time again! Margaret Simon at Reflections on the Teche has recruited 30 poets for the thirteenth annual Kidlitosphere Progressive Poem. This is a wonderful community writing project where a poem travels daily from blog to blog, with each host adding a new line. Linda Mitchell is kicking things off Tuesday with the first line of a child-friendly poem at A Word Edgewise. Here’s the evolving schedule of participating bloggers:

April 1 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
April 2 Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect
April 3 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge 
April 4 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
April 5 Denise Krebs at Dare to Care
April 6 Buffy at Buffy Silverman
April 7 Jone at Jone Rush MacCulloch
April 8 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
April 9 Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference
April 10 Marcie at Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 11 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities | Rose’s Blog
April 12 Fran Haley at Lit Bits and Pieces
April 13 Cathy Stenquist at A Little Bit of This & That
April 14 Janet Fagel at Mainly Write
April 15 Carol Varsalona at Beyond LiteracyLink
April 16 Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm
April 17 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
April 18 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
April 19 Ramona at Pleasures from the Page
April 20 Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading
April 21 Tanita Davis at fiction, instead of lies
April 22 Patricia Franz at Reverie
April 23 Ruth at There’s No Such Thing as a Godforsaken Town
April 24 Linda Kulp Trout at Write Time
April 25 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
April 26 Michelle Kogan at MoreArt4All
April 27 Linda Baie at TeacherDance
April 28 Pamela Ross at Words in Flight
April 29 Diane Davis at Starting Again in Poetry
April 30 April Halprin Wayland at Teaching Authors

*

Mary Lee Hahn’s NPM project is called “Speak Truth to Power.” She will be writing acrostic poems using words from the Banned Words List at the Pen America Website. Look for daily poems at Poetrepository, except for Fridays, when she’ll share them at A(nother)Year of Reading.

*

Over at her blog Of Tea and Mermaids, Jena Benton Lasley will once again be featuring poetry picture books throughout the month. Look for titles Jena has read recently Monday through Friday, with books previously featured in Simply 7 Interviews on Saturdays and Sundays. Such a great way to learn about new-to-you books!

*

Sarah Grace Tuttle will be writing at least 20 poems inspired by images held in freely available government databases– National Archives, Library of Congress, NASA, etc.., focusing especially on aspects of history and science that the Trump administration is trying to erase. She’s hoping to create a little archive of her own.

*

Jone Rush MacCulloch will be writing short poems during April using the Verse of Ages Poetry Prompts listed above.

*

At The Poem Farm, Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is sharing poems written in the voice of Little Red Riding Hood, and she invites anyone-who-wishes to join her in writing in the voice of someone else too.

You might choose a fairy tale character or a book character or a person from history or anyone else real or imagined. Each April day, she will share her poem and a little bit about writing poetry. Her focus this month will be adopting the perspective of another…for 30 days…and she welcomes you to her possible-prompt grid if you’d like to join in.

*

Inspired by the article 20+ Different (& Wild!) Poetry Forms for Inspiration, Tricia Stohr-Hunt will be writing to different (and unusual) forms at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

*

At her blog MoreArt4All, Michelle Kogan is writing THIRTY INSPIRATIONAL POEMS/While the World Falls Apart. She’ll be sharing her poems weekly for Poetry Friday.

*

Look for daily cheritas at Rose Cappelli’s blog, Imagine the Possibilities. She’ll be using specific words as prompts.

*

Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme has a busy April planned: he’s celebrating the official release of his first anthology, A Universe of Rainbows (Eerdmans BFYR, 2025) on April 1, will be chatting with poet Nikki Grimes about her new book, A Cup of Quiet (Bloomsbury, 2025) on April 18, and also reviewing Marjorie Maddox Hafer’s book, How Can I Look It Up When I Don’t Know How It’s Spelled?: Spelling Mnemonics and Grammar Tricks (Kelsay Books, 2024) on April 25.

*

Marcie Flinchum Atkins will be working on a new collection of poems this month. She got the idea for the project while attending a Highlights Foundation Poetry Retreat. She plans to devote at least 30 minutes every day researching or drafting, etc. It’ll be fun to follow her progress at her blog. 🙂

*

Over at her blog Reverie, Patricia Franz is writing a poem/day as part of the Stafford Challenge. For April, she will use a daily origami creation as her prompt. She hopes to post pictures and poems of them along the way!

*

Liz Garton Scanlon is marking 16 years of writing a haiku-a-day for NPM. She says:

“I used to have an incredible haiku community on twitter, back before the takeover. Our poemy clan feels dispersed now, so I’ll just share all over the place (Substack, Instagram, Facebook, Blog, Bluesky) and see what hits. Feel free to share yours too, in response to my posts or at your own place, in your own way. If you use these tags, I’ll try to find and read them!”

#lizsharespoems
#30daysofhaiku
#nationalpoetrymonth

*

Right here at Alphabet Soup, we’ll continue to feature interesting poems and books every Friday with weekly giveaways:

April 4: Review of A Universe of Rainbows (Esenwine, editor)
April 11: Sample poem from Savor: Poems for the Tongue (Breeland/Galloway eds.)
April 18: Interview with Andrea Potos (Two Emilys)
April 25: Two Poems from A Maze Me by Naomi Shihab Nye

*

Finally, don’t forget to check in with April’s Poetry Friday hosts to see what other bloggers are sharing in the kidlitosphere each week:

April

4 Matt at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme
11 Irene at Live Your Poem
18 Jone at Jone Rush MacCulloch
25 Heidi at my juicy little universe

*

♥️ I’ll continue to update this Roundup throughout April, so do check back! For your convenience, a link to this Roundup can be found in the sidebar of this blog.

Wishing you a thoroughly nourishing, inspiring, productive, interesting, and enlightening Poetry Month!

---

*Copyright © 2025 Jama Rattigan of Jama’s Alphabet Soup. All rights reserved.