Poem in Your Pocket day

Since 2004, during National Poetry Month, the Academy of American Poets holds Poem in Your Pocket Day, and we are celebrating it here at TVCC on April 24th! This is a day to, well, put a poem in your pocket.  It is also a day designed to get people talking about and sharing poetry.
What do you do?
1. Find a poem, write it down or print it out, and keep it in our pocket the whole of the day.

And don’t tell me you can’t find a poem that suits your pocket.  There are poems about everything (though, as G.K. Chesterton pointed out, “The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese”).

Here, for example, is a poem about a pocket:

 Pockets

Are generally over or around

Erogenous zones, they seem to dive

In the direction of those

Dark places, and indeed

It is their nature to be dark

Themselves, keeping a kind

Of thieves' kitchen for the things

Sequestered from the world

For long or little while,

The keys, the handkerchiefs,

The sad and vagrant little coins

That are really only passing through.

For all they locate close to lust,

No pocket ever sees another;

There is in fact a certain sadness

To pockets, going in their lonesome ways

And snuffling up their sifting storms

Of dust, tobacco bits and lint.

A pocket with a hole in it

Drops out; from shame, is that, or pride?

What is a pocket but a hole?

-Howard Nemerov

2. After you select the perfect poem to carry in your pocket, share it with everyone you meet!That’s the joy of poetry!  Ask someone if they have a poem in their pocket; Read someone the poem you have in your own.  To find out more about it or get a poem for your pocket, check out this site.

3. As an added incentive to do these things, there will be staff and faculty equipped with raffle tickets wearing buttons which say, "Is that a poem in your pocket?" that they will give you if you read your poem to them.  You will find staff or faculty wearing buttons in most of the campus buildings.  You can also visit the Library and read your poem to one of the staff there for tickets.  Collect as many tickets as you wish, and bring them to the Open Mic Poetry Night in the Library at 6:00 pm.  You can read your pocket poem and other poems, listen to staff and faculty read some of their favorites, eat some yummy treats, and put your tickets in a drawing for some truly fabulous prizes.

What is great about this event is the reading aloud of poetry to one another. Poems should be read aloud. It gives the words a life that the page cannot. If you've not heard poetry aloud, it is a wonderful experience. Try some of these tags on LastFM for a great listen. You will find amazing slam poetry, true beat poetry from the likes of Jack Kerouac, and performances that will have you reexamining what you think about a poem like the feature by Lady Khadija, and many others. Give it a try.