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National Poetry Month is an opportunity to celebrate the universal art of the mind

Why is poetry important? Writing in general promotes a literate culture, one based not just on facts and data, but also on the writer’s thoughts on the larger question of humanity. Poetry, perhaps because of its intensely personal nature, tends to focus on greater internal thoughts about what it means to be human.

The Folger Shakespeare Library's Poetry-in-Schools program, now in its seventh year, serves Washington, D.C., public high school students. The goals of Poetry-In-Schools are to introduce students to poetry, encourage new voices, and provide high school students with a college level writing workshop.

The program is available at no cost to participating schools. It has so far been offered at Anacostia High School, Eastern High School, Banneker High School, The IDEA Charter School, SEED Public Charter School, Thurgood Marshall Academy, and Wilson High School. The program currently serves four schools a year and hopes to expand to reach all Washington, D.C., public high schools on a biennial basis.

In each school, Poetry-In-Schools works with an English teacher to provide a series of five in-class weekly workshops on reading, writing, and listening to poetry, led by a Folger Poetry Educator (Poetry Educators are all local published poets or scholars). At the end of the workshop series, the class receives a visit by one of the nationally acclaimed poets reading in the Folger Poetry Series; each student receives a copy of a book by the visiting poet. The students also compile a book of their own poetry, which is bound and printed by the Folger.

The Writer's Center is a non-profit community of writers supporting each other in the creation and marketing of literary texts. The Writer's Center annually conducts hundreds of workshops in various genres of writing. Workshop participants share with one another their work-in-progress under the guidance of an experienced instructor who is also a published author. The Writer's Center is located in the arts and entertainment district of Bethesda, Md., with workshops also offered in Leesburg and Arlington, Va., and at other locations around the greater Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.

The Writer’s Center is the publisher of Poet Lore, the oldest continuously published poetry magazine in the U.S., currently celebrating its 120th anniversary. Founded in 1889 as "a monthly magazine devoted to letters and to the study of Shakespeare, Browning, and Comparative Literature," Poet Lore has been instrumental in publishing the work of emerging and established poets, many of whom first published in the pages of Poet Lore: Carl Phillips, Carolyn Forche, Sharon Olds, John Balaban, Alice Fulton, William Meredith, Sandra Gilbert, among many others. In addition, Poet Lore was one of the first American journals to publish the work of Nobel Prize-winner Rabindranath Tagore, Henrik Ibsen, and August Strindberg. Poet Lore publishes original poems, book reviews, and critical essays about contemporary poetry, poetics, and poets, and accepts submissions year-round.

Folger Shakespeare Library Poetry-In-Schools program: 201 East Capitol Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003, Phone: 202-544–4600, Fax: 202-544–4623, Folger.edu

The Writer’s Center: 4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD 20815, Phone: 301 654-8664, Fax: 801-730-6233, Writer.org; poetlore.com