National Poetry Month™, the modern celebration which takes place in April, is a trademark of the Academy of American Poets, and this year marks the 30th anniversary of the April celebration. While for most active poets, every month is poetry month, this month is when many institutions formally pay tribute to our chosen art form with numerous special events.
However, prior to 1996 a worldwide grassroots movement already existed for nearly five decades that celebrated the art of poetry internationally in the month of October. In modern tellings of Poetry Month’s history, what brought about this change in which particular month honors poetry seems to have been erased.
Even the Academy itself promoted poetry month celebrations in October 1959 alongside well-established poetry organizations like the National League of American Pen Women, National Federation of State Poetry Societies, and Federation of Chaparral Poets. So I question why April 1996 is commonly referenced in newspaper articles as the being the very first.
My research began with reading old issues of the Vallejo Times-Herald online where I came across published poetry by local poets in the 1950s who had formed a club called the Redwood Writers Club. Our local paper had a general ban on publishing poetry, but would make an exception every October 15 to highlight the works of local poets. I made a list on Vallejo Poetry Society to honor the local poets who came before.
I was looking for unique quotes to put on the VPS blog for UNESCO World Poetry Day on March 21 when I came across some articles about Earl Cuevas, a lobbyist during the Great Depression whose mission it was to improve the economic situation of poets by encouraging state and national laureateships. His organization the Poet Laureate League named several state poets laureate, including the first Black poet laureate in the US, Julious Caesar Hill of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
These articles were how I first came across Pennsylvania Poet Laureate Ralph Cheyney and his wife Lucia Trent, a married couple who organized poets into clubs such as the Rebel Poets and Western Poets Congress, associated with the John Reed Club, and assembled anthologies of often topical poetry. They honored figures like Eugene Debs, Sacco and Vanzetti, and two names likely more familiar to my fellow Vallejoans, Billings and Mooney of Alibi Clock fame.
In reading about Ralph Cheyney I first thought it such a remarkable fact that he died on Poetry Day. Then I fell down the rabbit hole of World Poetry Day…
Long before UNESCO declared its World Poetry Day to be March 21 at the turn of this century, many organizations and nations celebrated World Poetry Day on October 15. I don’t know how the rumor even got started that that date was chosen to honor the Roman poet Virgil which is what Wikipedia states, but it is far from the truth, and I hope to correct the record.
Six years after her husband’s death, drawing inspiration from Tessa Sweezy Webb who organized Ohio’s Poetry Day in October 1937, Lucia Trent chose to honor Ralph Cheyney by creating Texas Poets Day with then Texas Poet Laureate Aline B. Carter. The holiday was first celebrated on October 15, 1947. By 1950 poets organized into a nationwide movement to spread the holiday. The National Poetry Day Committee had representatives across the country whose job it was to advocate that their state legislature or governor proclaim October 15 as Poetry Day in their state.
In 1955 Mary O’Connor, a Philadelphia poet confined to a wheelchair, began writing letters to leaders around the world, encouraging them to adopt October 15 as World Poetry Day. By the next decade October 15 was being celebrated as World Poetry Day in 33 countries, including England which since 1994 celebrates its National Poetry Day on the first Thursday of October also claiming that occasion was the very first.
In 1966 Florida poet Dr. Frances Clark Handler, founder of the Florida State Poetry Society, incorporated the organization into the National Poetry Day Committee, Inc. and World Poetry Day Committee, Inc. By 1977 41 countries and all 50 states were celebrating poetry in October on the 15th.
Dr. Handler collected copies of official proclamations from various state governments, and attempted many times to get the U.S. Congress to pass a bill (including House Joint Resolution 489 in 1967 and 351 in 1969), officially proclaiming the national holiday in October. The NPDC did get proclamations from then future presidents such as Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan when they were governors, but not official presidential recognition. Dr. Handler headed the organization until her death in 1993.
Three years later President Bill Clinton declared April the first National Poetry Month™.
Like the UNESCO date first celebrated in 2000, the available histories link poetry to vague themes of spring rebirth instead of the fascinating history of some of our nation’s most active poets who much like the poets of today see a connection between their activism and poetry.
We stand on the shoulders of the poets who came before us both locally and internationally. These three women headed a gargantuan effort to gain formal recognition at a time before our era of hyper-connected Internet that so easily unites poets across the globe.
Their efforts should continue to be recognized as should the numerous volunteers across the country who communicated with their state leaders for official recognition for over five decades prior to the first National Poetry Month™.
October 2027 will mark 90 years.
The images below are from The Governor’s Book, by Frances Clark Handler, Lit.D., 1971
