World Poetry Day

Illustration by Daniel Savage for The New Yorker

What is World Poetry Day, and why is it important?

World Poetry Day 2025 is on Friday, March 21. It was created to celebrate and preserve poetry and was declared by UNESCO in 1999 "with the aim of supporting linguistic diversity through poetic expression and increasing the opportunity for endangered languages to be heard."

And, certainly, all of that is important, but why poetry?

"Poetry is important."

"Poetry increases literacy."

"Poetry broadens horizons."

"Poetry is a universal language."

You've probably heard all of that before and resisted the urge to roll your eyes. Maybe you did roll your eyes. (The author of this, who isn't supposed to speak of herself in the first person, wishes to tell you she used to hate poetry with a special vehemence she reserved only for the subject matter and wet socks—but has found that her mind has been changed.)

image by Everett for The New Yorker

But poetry is important.

It is relevant to teens in the modern day and age. Do we feel the wide range of emotions expressed by poetry or limit ourselves to the staid lines and constricting structure of prose? Are we organic creatures or droids fashioned of metal plates and screws? Do we think in the long and dry sentences of prose or the short and explosive fragments of poetry?

Reason 1: Poetry exposes you to people and culture from all over the world.

It enables us to empathize with those who are different from us, which is especially important in our modern, interconnected world.

I come from a country so far away

that you may have visited only in your dreams.

My face does not bear the pale color of my palms.

I don’t speak your language at home.

I don’t even sound like you.

If you come to my house, you’ll see my family:

my mother in a sari,

my father wearing a sacred thread around his body,

and me, eating a plate of spicy biryani

instead of a burger or pizza

at the dinner table.

If you, for a moment, shed your filter,

you will also see my pockets filled with Tootsie Rolls,

waiting to be shared with you.

Filter by Suma Subramanian

Reason 2: Poetry increases literacy.

Unlike prose, often rife with pretension, the right poetry is designed to destroy boundaries. Poetry, when done right, is accessible to all.

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden

Reason 3: Poetry helps to develop interpretation skills.

Life is not a list of facts handed to oneself to understand and requires reading between the lines. Poetry, which is lineless and limitless, enables you to broaden your horizons.

She begins, and my grandmother joins her.

Mother and daughter sing like young girls.

If my father were alive, he would play

his accordion and sway like a boat.

I’ve never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace,

nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch

the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers

running away in the grass.

But I love to hear it sung;

how the waterlilies fill with rain until

they overturn, spilling water into water,

then rock back, and fill with more.

Both women have begun to cry.

But neither stops her song.

I Ask My Mother to Sing by Li-young Lee

Reason 4: Poetry provides you a way to express yourself.

Poetry, unlike prose, provides the perfect medium for self-expression. Poetry has no rules, and, as poet Elisabet Velasquez put it, it is "impossible to speak wrong in a poem."

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Stop All the Clocks/Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden

Poetry is a marvelous thing. This Friday, March 21, I urge you to take a minute of your time to read a poem. I urge you to push your horizons wider. I urge you to destroy the boundaries holding you back. I urge you to interpret things in-between, above, below, and on top of the lines. I urge you to express yourself. I urge you to celebrate your humanity. I assure you, you will not regret it.

Sources

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/155490/filter

https://poets.org/poem/those-winter-sundays

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56513/i-ask-my-mother-to-sing

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/159365/twelve-songs-ix