Announcements

“In a 1963 speech at Amherst College, [President John F. Kennedy] said, “When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence.” That sentiment is precisely what the Poetry Foundation had in mind when it put together the D.C. Poetry Tour.”

—Roll Call, January 2010

VIEW ARTICLE
DOWNLOAD FULL ARTICLE

“Did anyone actually predict Susan Boyle’s sudden rise to fame? Or did any professional educator predict the scale of Poetry Out Loud’s success? — especially its jump from 40,000 participants nationwide to 300,000 in four years.”

—EducationNews.org,
January 2010

VIEW ARTICLE
DOWNLOAD FULL ARTICLE

“Her gift, which had come as a surprise, has enabled the small literary journal to become a foundation that supports and promotes poetry on a larger scale. (Its website, particularly the poetry database, is a wonderful result of Lilly’s gift.)”

—JacketCopy (LA Times blog), December 2009

VIEW ARTICLE
DOWNLOAD FULL ARTICLE

“So here’s my holiday shout-out for 2009: to Ruth Lilly, philanthropy, poetry, independent magazines, and Sir Thomas Wyatt, whose verses preserve the history of the Tudors. Poetry, and Poetry, thanks to charitable giving, helps us understand our world.”

—GOOD, December 2009

VIEW ARTICLE
DOWNLOAD FULL ARTICLE

“Most of us think of poets as creatures of Washington, D.C., only at inaugural time, when they’re sometimes recruited to offer a poem as part of the ceremony. But the Poetry Foundation’s virtual tour should help throw light on a city that, for all its foibles, also is worthy of poetic inspiration.”

—Baton Rouge Advocate, November 2009

VIEW ARTICLE
DOWNLOAD FULL ARTICLE

“I left Somalia when I was 4, and grew up in a refugee camp in Kenya. When I was 17, my family and I came to the U.S. …Ms. Kelly convinced me to compete in Poetry Out Loud, a national poetry competition…I picked Stephen Dunn’s poem, "Sweetness." It’s about what it means to be alive -- there is sadness, not only sweetness in life.”

—Minnesota Public Radio, November 2009

VIEW ARTICLE
DOWNLOAD FULL ARTICLE

“Listen my children and you shall hear of a poetry contest I went to this year. 200,000 high schoolers took part using some poems that they learned by heart. This wasn’t a contest of poetry writing, but a national contest for poem reciting. Out loud so that people could hear what they mean.”

—CBS Sunday Morning
with Charles Osgood,
September 2009

VIEW ARTICLE

Perhaps the most successful, and forward-looking, [poetry advocacy] program of the past few years has been Poetry Out Loud, a recitation competition for high-school students that is often compared to the Scripps National Spelling Bee. It was created by the NEA and the Poetry Foundation, and in 2006, its first year as a national contest, about 40,000 students participated. This year, nearly 300,000 students are taking part, reciting both contemporary and classical poetry.

—Newsweek, March 2009
DOWNLOAD FULL ARTICLE

“As a construction worker who spends long hours in a dirty, harsh environment, I welcome a respite of classical music and literature. My mother had me recite poetry at the age of 4 to her lady friends, and a seed was planted. . . . Unfortunately, poetry does not inspire our politics, music or collective ethos today. The trouble is poetry requires a sense of history, irony, metaphor, style and the ability to sit and contemplate.”

—Time, July 2007
DOWNLOAD FULL ARTICLE

“Poetry has done what long seemed impossible: It has reclaimed it place at the center of American poetry. More, it has become one of the most interesting literary periodicals of any kind published today.”

—NY Sun, December 2005
DOWNLOAD FULL ARTICLE

“Last fall, Jack Prelutsky was fittingly named the first Children’s Poet Laureate, by the Poetry Foundation.”

—NY Times Book Review,
February 2007
DOWNLOAD FULL ARTICLE

“They decided to use its behest as an instrument of advocacy, via the internet. So they created the world’s largest foundation for verse—and a rich web site.”

—CBC News, January 2007
DOWNLOAD FULL ARTICLE

“A new national study of American readers has found a warm place in their souls for poetry, even though their brains go mostly blank on verse.”

—Chicago Tribune, April 2006
DOWNLOAD FULL ARTICLE

“This week high school students from all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Came to the capital to compete in the national finals of Poetry Out Loud. The winner, Jackson Hille, earned a $20,000 scholarship.”

—NPR Weekend Edition,
March 2006
DOWNLOAD FULL ARTICLE