The Poetry Coalition is a national alliance of nearly thirty organizations working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and the important contribution poetry makes in all our lives. Members are nonprofit organizations whose primary mission is to promote poets and poetry, and/or multi-genre literary organizations that serve poets in the disability community and of specific racial, ethnic, or gender identities, backgrounds, or communities.
From March through May 2023, the Poetry Coalition has explored the theme “and so much lost you’d think / beauty had left a lesson: Poetry & Grief” in a series of virtual and in-person programs. The line “and so much lost you’d think / beauty had left a lesson” is from Ed Roberson’s poem “once the magnolia has blossomed.” For more information about the coalition and the 2023 theme, visit poets.org!
Each year since its inauguration, the National Student Poets Program has joined the coalition’s efforts by providing thematically aligned programming and resources. This year, we’re thrilled to also include works and resources made possible thanks to the student writers who received a 2023 New York Life Award.
Emma Ray
Emma Ray is one of six recipients of the 2023 National New York Life Award. Ray, an 8th grader at Jefferson Junior High School in Naperville, Illinois, wrote The Darkness We Must Face after the loss of her father nine months earlier. In her personal statement, she wrote that writing poetry has “helped [her] to work through [her] grief, though [she is] still working and may be for a long time.” Emma’s work additionally received a Gold Medal in Poetry in the 2023 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.
Click to read The Darkness We Must Face by Emma Ray
Emily Igwike
Emily Igwike, born in Milwaukee, has lived in Brown Deer, Wisconsin, all her life. She is the Class of 2022 National Student Poet for the Midwest. Igwike is the daughter of two loving Igbo-Nigerian immigrants. She developed her passion for writing at an early age by reading novels. With her mother’s influence, she grew fond of telling stories and, through poetry, Igwike not only curated her voice but also let others hear her. Beginning with short stories and choppy poems, Igwike formulated her ever-developing craft into one that spoke to her. She hopes to be a role model for young, Black girls like her, as well as a testament to the power of the spoken word.
Emily’s poem, new African, received a Silver Medal in the 2023 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.
Click to read new African by Emily Igwike
Darius Atefat-Peckham
Darius Atefat-Peckham is an Iranian-American poet and essayist and was the Class of 2018 National Student Poet for the Midwest. His work has appeared in Poetry, Poem-a-Day, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Journal, and Indiana Review, and in the anthology, My Shadow Is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora. He is the author of the chapbook How Many Love Poems (Seven Kitchens Press, 2021) and editor of Deep Are These Distances Between Us by Susan Atefat-Peckham (CavanKerry Press, 2023). Atefat-Peckham lives in Huntington, West Virginia, and currently studies English and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard College.
Click to read to touch a ghost by Darius Atefat-Peckham
We hope you will also visit our other resources and get started on art and writing of your own! Learn more about translating your emotions into words, writing through uncomfortable feelings, and exploring emotional imagery through our Resilience Through Poetry Workshop Series on YouTube, and hear from this year’s New York Life Award winners. And keep in touch by signing up for our newsletter to learn about fall workshops and how to enter your work.
Featured image: Sophia Li, Floating, Photography. Grade 11, Arcadia High School, Arcadia, CA. California State New York Life Award, 2023