April is National Poetry Month, celebrating poetry’s importance
to our culture and our lives. The Academy of American Poets launched National Poetry Month, in April
1996. The month-long celebration aims to encourage the reading of poems and increase
the attention paid to poetry and poets nationwide.*
You’re probably aware of a few types of poetry, but here are
some lesser-known forms (take a look at the complete list categorized by the National
Poetry Foundation, it’s fascinating!):
- Doggerel -Bad verse traditionally characterized by clichés, clumsiness, and irregular meter. It is often unintentionally humorous. The “giftedly bad” William McGonagall was an accomplished doggerelist, as demonstrated in “The Tay Bridge Disaster”.
- Gnomic verse - Poems laced with proverbs, aphorisms, or maxims. The term was first applied to Greek poets in the 6th century BCE and was practiced in medieval Germany and England. See excerpts from the Exeter Book. Robert Creeley explored the genre in his contemporary “Gnomic Verses.”
- Slam - A competitive poetry performance in which selected audience members score performers, and winners are determined by total points. Slam is a composite genre that combines elements of poetry, theater, performance, and storytelling. The genre’s origins can be traced to Chicago in the early 1980s. Since then, groups of volunteers have organized slams in venues across the world. The first National Poetry Slam was held in 1990, and has become an annual event in which teams from cities across the United States compete at events in a host city. For more on poetry slams, see Jeremy Richards’s series “Performing the Academy”. See also poets Tyehimba Jess, Bob Holman, and Patricia Smith.
*SOURCE: http://www.poets.org/national-poetry-month/about-celebration
