Dear Readers,
April is here with National Poetry Month! Launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996, National Poetry Month is a special occasion that celebrates poets’ integral role in our culture and that poetry matters. Over the years, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world, with tens of millions of readers, students, K–12 teachers, librarians, booksellers, literary events curators, publishers, families, and—of course—poets, marking poetry’s important place in our lives. Poem in Your Pocket Day takes place every year on a day in National Poetry Month. Poem in Your Pocket Day 2025 will take place on April 10, and there are many ways to celebrate. Select a poem and share it on social media using the hashtag #PocketPoem. Email a poem to your friends, family, neighbors, or local government leaders, and more. Read more about Poem in Your Pocket at the Academy of American Poets website. Here are some poetry recommendations from the Book Beat staff:
Congrats to Anne Carson whose latest book Wrong Norma won the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry. As committee chair David Woo observed, Carson’s “magnificently witty and desolate pieces attest to a struggle to represent not only the reality of others…but a self that, in its mortal decline and self-reflexive unknowability, may be the most exquisitely difficult to encompass of all.”
Earth Day is April 22nd. The theme for Earth Day 2025 is OUR POWER, OUR PLANET, inviting everyone around the globe to unite behind renewable energy, and to triple the global generation of clean electricity by 2030. Read more here about ways to educate, advocate, and mobilize. Below you’ll find recommended reads about our nature, wildlife, and the preservation of our planet!
April 26th is Independent Bookstore Day! Come celebrate at Book Beat with exclusive deals and book swag. Participate in the Michigan Book Hop by visiting independent bookstores to win prizes. 15% off poetry, staff recommendations, and sale books!
April is also National Arab American Heritage Month, a time to honor the cultures and contributions of Arab American communities. Read the great non-fiction collection, Hadha Balduna:Arab American Narratives of Boundary and Belonging, a book by and about Metro-Detroit’s Arab community. Dunya Mikhail is a local award winning Iraqi-American poet whose recent work Tablets: Secrets of the Clay transforms the earliest written symbols into poetry of contemporary daily life. Stop in and check out other classics of Arab literature, Middle Eastern cooking, culture, and history. Here is a partial list of titles that celebrate Arab American Heritage Month:
For many of us, the daily onslaught of news and dismantling of our government has been nerve shattering. Remember to support and stand up for science, education, and human rights. Read both fiction and non-fiction. Widen your knowledge. Listen to the amazing John Lithgow read excerpts from Timothy Snyder’s Twenty Lessons On Tyranny. A recent post on Snyder’s substack, “What to Expect When You’re Expecting Catastrophe” by guest author Laurie Winer made some fitting observations. She writes:
Magical thinking is far from new. Adolf Hitler came to power amid similar lies and conspiracy theories. We should know where that leads. And, while MAGA may ignore the mountains of books written on fascism, the rest of us are not in the dark about what comes next.
As we brace for further actions from a cabinet catering to a serial fabulist, it is important to note that the president’s abstruse nonsense is not random. It has a history. A history that takes us in only one direction, to catastrophe.
Here, then, are things to watch for, all warnings from the well-known story of the Third Reich.
Daily life will take on a surreal quality and, if we do not take some action or join an organized resistance, our discussions will consist of merely repeating the latest horror.
Book Beat is a space devoted to children’s books, multiculturalism, fine arts, quality lit, and book-love for all people. Our April Newsletter includes an interview with Mz Shirley Tinsley reflecting on her life of teaching and reading in Detroit, also Tom Bowden’s 56th monthly column of small press reviews: “i arrogantly recommend…” , and we have upcoming author signings and lectures with Karl Marlantes and Rita Woods. Our April reading groups will be discussing Mrs. Caliban and Death in Spring. Stay tuned for National Bookstore Day news and Thank You for your continued support. Be well and be kind to yourself and others.
Happy reading!
-Cary, Colleen, and the Book Beat staff
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To be a writer is to construct a big, loud, shiny centre of self from which the writing is given voice and any claim to be intent on annihilating this self while still continuing to write and give voice to writing must involve the writer in some important acts of subterfuge or contradiction.
-Anne Carson from Decreation