Poem in Your Pocket Day
Poem in Your Pocket Day on April 30, 2026, will bring National Poetry Month to a delightful close.
Poem in Your Pocket Day was initiated in April 2002 by the Office of the Mayor, in partnership with the New York City Departments of Cultural Affairs and Education, as part of the city’s National Poetry Month celebration. The Academy of American Poets, which launched National Poetry Month in 1996, took Poem in Your Pocket Day to all 50 United States in 2008, encouraging individuals across the country to join in and channel their inner bard. The Academy of American Poets and the League of Canadian Poets, the latter of which has organized National Poetry Month in Canada since 1998, have teamed up to extend the reach of Poem in Your Pocket Day in North America.
This year the Academy of American Poets created a collection of short or resonant poems available as a pdf on their Poem in Your Pocket Day page if you have trouble with the download from my link. I know The Slowdown is often good for a great pocket poem and the archives are deep! I haven’t updated my spreadsheet of poetry I use with my students but there are many amazing poems in this collection as well.
Last, but not least, I offer up Lost Place by Silas House:
“I recall the wild places, fecund, rich. / I wade into the creek, diaphanous / myself, am I haint or witch?” the speaker wonders. But then he focuses our attention toward what’s at stake: “Now, this is the land of the beguiled, / I see it before me so plain, / the little paths I trod as a child / and will never mark again.” –From Poems for the Timesick
What is your favorite pocket-size poem? I’m making a note to myself to work on my own personal pocket poem collection for next year. Doesn’t that sound like a delightful task for my third act? Maybe I’ll do some sort of Poetry Madness brackets but only with pocket-sized poems.
Note: Rebel Cartographer Ann Haney shared This is Just to Say and Kansas City Octopus.
