Online Resources

• Partner sites
• General poetry sites
• Teacher-specific resources
• Online courses in poetry
• Single-poet archives
• Audiovisual archives
• Other organizations and festivals

Partner Sites

Poetry Out Loud
Guidelines, announcements, and poems for the national high school recitation contest.

PBS LearningMedia
On-demand media service for educators that provides easy access to free, classroom-ready, curriculum-targeted, multi-platform resources for grades K–12. Free registration.

PBS NewsHour Extra
Videos of poets reading and discussing their work, segments on poetry and contemporary culture, poet profiles, and teaching tips.

The Poetry Archive UK
Recordings of poets reading their work. Includes historic archive, children’s archive, poet in residence blog, lesson plans, and activities.

General Poetry Sites

The Academy of American Poets
Poems, poet biographies, interviews, recordings, and essays. Includes a newsletter and events calendar, academy resources, discussion forum, a poet’s workshop of exercises, and teaching ideas.

American Verse Project
Full texts of volumes of American poetry pre-1920.

BBC Poetry
The British Broadcasting Company’s poetry site. Poems, poets’ biographies, videos, and writing and performance tips from contemporary poets.

Contemporary American Poetry Archive
Full texts of out-of-print volumes of contemporary poetry.

Electronic Poetry Center (SUNY Buffalo)
Gateway for sites and resources related to innovative poetry. Extensive links to poets, digital projects, and publications.

Kennedy Center's Digital Resources Library
Free digital, remote learning resources for incorporating poetry into K-12 classrooms.

Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature
Medieval, Renaissance, 17th-century, and Restoration poets. Poems, biographies, and critical essays.

Modern American Poetry
Extensive material on poets included in Anthology of Modern American Poetry (Oxford). Manuscripts, brief critical essays, historical backgrounds, biographies, interviews, and sample syllabi.

PAL: Perspectives in American Literature - A Research and Reference Guide
Pages on American authors include bibliographies, biographies, and outside links. Information on literary movements and definitions, writing assignments, and historical perspectives.

Paris Review Interview Archive
Index of the Paris Review’s author interviews from the 1950s to 2000s. A selection are available as full-text PDFs.

Poemage
A visualization system for exploring the sonic topology of a poem. Developed at the University of Utah as part of an ongoing, highly exploratory collaboration between data visualization experts, poets, and poetry scholars.

Poetry Daily
Anthology features one new contemporary poem each day, selected from current journals and books. Includes an archive of past selections.

Poetry International
International poets searchable by country or name. Poems in original language and translation, biographies, articles, and recordings.

Poets’ Corner
Includes work by roughly 800 poets. Individual poems and a selection of book-length collections, including anthologies.

Representative Poetry Online
Collection of poetry from Old English to the present day. Includes a glossary, timeline, and selection of criticism.

Voca
The University of Arizona Poetry Center's Audio Video Library.

Online Courses in Poetry (MOOCs)

Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (Coursera)
Taught by Al Filreis, Kelly Family Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania
ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary US poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse. Participants (who need no prior experience with poetry) will learn how to read poems that are supposedly “difficult.”

Modern Poetry (Open Yale Courses)
Taught by Langdon Hammer, professor of English at Yale University
This course covers the body of modern poetry, its characteristic techniques and concerns. The authors discussed include Yeats, Eliot, Pound, Moore, Bishop, and Frost. Additional lectures on the poetry of WWI and the Harlem Renaissance.

How Writers Write Poetry (The Writing University Open Courses)
Taught by Christopher Merrill and Mary Hickman, the University of Iowa
An interactive course that presents a curated collection of short, intimate talks on craft by two dozen contemporary poets writing in English. Craft topics include appropriation, meter, constraints, sound, mindfulness, and pleasure.

Poetry: What It Is, and How to Understand It (Udemy)
Taught by Margaret Soltan, associate professor at George Washington University
This course will attempt to define the genre of poetry, to discuss its particular attributes and difficulties, and to isolate the sorts of truths that poetry seems best at conveying. Our focus will be on modern poetry, in English and in translation.

Teacher-specific resources

The Academy of American Poets: For Educators
Extensive range of free poetry resources for teachers.

EdSITEment Literature and Language Arts
Lesson plans and links for literature classes, grades K–12.

Favorite Poem Project: Poetry Lesson Plans
Lesson plans based on the Favorite Poem Project, emphasizing reading and appreciation.

Poetry Class
British website devoted to integrating poetry into the classroom; offers lesson plans, assessment advice, and training courses in the UK.

Readwritethink
Lesson plans and web resources for students and teachers, organized around IRA/NCTE Standards for the English Language Arts.

Teacher Vision
Activity ideas and lesson plans for elementary students; first three articles free, thereafter membership required.

Teachers and Writers Collaborative
Insights, practices, and techniques from professional writers and educators; includes information on TW Collaborative in-school and professional development programs.

ThinkCERCA
A Common Core State Standards literacy resource for teachers who want to incorporate poetry and other genres to help students learn to read closely, think critically, and develop powerful arguments.

Writers in the Schools
Home page of popular program; includes resources for teachers, WITS blog, and links to publication opportunities for students.

Single-poet archives

Dickinson Electronic Archives
Collection of digital facsimiles of Dickinson’s poetry and correspondence, emphasizing her process of composition; includes links to secondary sources.

The Classroom Electric
Whitman, Dickinson, and American culture; provides links to thematically based sites with text and discussion questions. For upper-level/college grade levels.

Walt Whitman Archive
Includes e-text and facsimile versions of all editions of Leaves of Grass; contemporary reviews and correspondence; and extended biography and bibliography with links.

Audiovisual archives

From the Fishhouse: An Audio Archive of Emerging Poets
Audio archive of emerging poets reading and in conversation.

Key West Literary Seminar: Audio Archives
Digitized recordings of past readings, panels, and discussions from the Key West Literary Seminar.

Library of Congress poetry site
Comprehensive site for Poet Laureate and related Library of Congress programs; includes webcasts of laureates and Witter Bynner fellows.

National Council of Teachers’ Teaching Resource Collections
Resources for English teachers including lesson plans, discussion forums, and professional development opportunities.

Seattle Arts & Lectures
Calendar and archives of long-running Seattle lecture series; contains information on Writers-in-the-Schools and Wednesday University programs.

PENNSound
Largest collection of poetry audio files on the Internet; includes readings, conversations, and lectures in downloadable mp3 format.

Poem Present: Readings and Lectures
Streamed audio/video of University of Chicago’s distinguished reading and lecture series.

Poetry Center at San Francisco State University
The reading series, is one of the longest-running such programs in the US. Includes the American Poetry Archives, approaching 5,000 hours of original audio and video recordings, available online at The Poetry Center Digital Archive.

UbuWeb
Comprehensive site for avant-garde and conceptual poetry and poetics; includes hundreds of audio files, short videos, and e-text resources.

92nd Street Y Reading Series
Webcasts of prestigious New York reading series.

Other organizations and festivals

Cave Canem Foundation
A home for the many voices of African American poetry, committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African American poets.

Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Program
Official site of annual Dodge Poetry Festival; contains overview of Poetry-in-the-Schools program and information for teachers, poets, and students.

Kundiman
Dedicated to the creation and cultivation of Asian American literature, Kundiman offers a comprehensive spectrum of arts programming that gives writers opportunities to inscribe their own stories.

Letras Latinas
The literary initiative at Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies, which seeks to enhance the visibility, appreciation, and study of Latino literature both on and off the campus.

Mass Poetry
Supports poets and poetry in Massachusetts to transform people’s lives through inspiring verse, with programs, readings, and an annual poetry festival.

National Student Poets Program/Alliance for Young Artists and Writers
The Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers partner to present the nation’s highest honor for young poets (grades 10–11) creating original work. Annually, five students are selected for one year of service, each representing a different geographic region of the country.

O, Miami Festival
Expands and advances literary culture in Greater Miami, Florida area with a visiting writer series, a poetry festival, a publishing imprint, and other programs.

Poets House
A comfortable, accessible place for poetry in downtown Manhattan, offering a library and meeting place, and events and readings. Poets House seeks to document the wealth and diversity of modern poetry, to stimulate dialogue on issues of poetry in culture, and to cultivate a wider audience for poetry.

Split This Rock Poetry Festival
Cultivates, teaches, and celebrates poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes social change. Hosts festivals, readings, workshops, and offers programming for youth.

Wick Poetry Festival
Engages individuals and communities in the transformative power of poetry. Members of the Wick Outreach Program provide writing workshops, discussion groups, and professional development to a variety of communities throughout northeast Ohio.

University of Arizona Poetry Center
A large poetry library, reading space, and living archive, founded to maintain and cherish the spirit of poetry. Promotes poetic literacy and sustains, enriches, and advances a diverse literary culture.