a community challenge to read one book of poetry a day for the month of August.
Read 31 poetry books in 31 days.
There’s no official sign-up, no rigid structure, just a simple, radical act: read a book of poetry every day for the month of August. The goals of the Sealey Challenge are to read a book each day, engage with diverse voices, and be an active member of an online community of poetry lovers. Of course, the point of the Sealey Challenge isn't perfection—the point is to spend (more) time with poetry!
visit the sealey challenge website
The largest poetry-reading initiative in the world.
In the past 10 years of The Sealey Challenge, we estimate more than 24 million poems have been read by the community.
This informal poetry-reading challenge started back in 2017 by poet Nicole Sealey. Balancing her administrative work with the promotion of her first book left Nicole little time to read for pleasure. So she decided to challenge herself to a personal goal: read a book of poems each day for the month of August. Nicole announced her intention on social media and the challenge quickly took off, inspiring its own hashtag: #SealeyChallenge!
Since the 2023 #SealeyChallenge, Nicole Sealey has entrusted the University of Arizona’s Poetry Center with caring for this incredible month of reading poetry, what we like to think of as a global poetic pilgrimage.
There’s no wrong way to #SealeyChallenge.
The point of the Sealey Challenge isn't perfection—the point is to spend more time with poetry! Some ways to modify the challenge:
- read a poem a day
- spend 30 minutes reading poetry each day
- read chapbooks instead of full-length books
- cut the challenge in half: read 15 books in August instead of 31
- read a poem to your children every day
- if August isn’t your month, you could have yourself a #SealeySeptember (or any other time of year, too!)
Free poetry resources.
Voca - listen to more than one thousand poems read in the voice of the poet.
Poetry Centered Podcast - Enjoy 3 poems handpicked by a poet.
Poem-a-Day - Get a poem in your inbox every day from poets.org.
Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the Day - Get a poem in your inbox every day from The Poetry Foundation.