Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day! This year, we are excited to celebrate the 50th anniversary of this important public recognition of the modern environmental movement. Below, we’ve shared some resources at the Poetry Center to help celebrate Earth Day this year! You’ll find seven recorded readings from leading poets who participated in our Climate Change and Poetry series; some sample lesson plans suitable for poets of all ages; a link to Earth Stanzas, a project of our sister organization the Wick Poetry Center that asks you to share your own poetic voice in creating a community poem, and a few poems celebrating animals from younger poets in Tucson who participate in the Poetry Center’s K-12 youth programs. However you choose to celebrate Earth Day this year, we hope you will do so with poetry!

Revisit our exciting the Climate Change and Poetry series, which invited poets to explore the connection between our climate future and the imaginative capacity of language. Featured readers included Brenda Hillman, Robert Hass, Aracelis Girmay, Camille Dungy, Joy Harjo, Ross Gay, Brian Teare, and Alison Hawthorne Deming. Learn more about this series and watch the readings.

Interested in celebrating Earth Day by writing a poem yourself? Try one of these lesson plans from the Poetry Center’s Lesson Plan Library.

Desert Creatures, Desert Sounds

Or: participate in the community poem option from Earth Stanzas, a just-launched project celebrating this important Earth Day anniversary from our Poetry Coalition peer organization and frequent collaborator the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University.

Lastly, enjoy a few poems about animals from the Poetry Center’s K-12 programs:

Anahi Bucio