ArtspeakRadio Celebrates National Poetry Month

Artspeak Radio, Wednesday, April 14, 2021, 90.1fm KKFI Kansas City Community Radio, streaming live audio www.kkfi.org

Producer/host Maria Vasquez Boyd celebrates April as National Poetry Month with a stanza of poets. Featured poets include; José Faus, Waco Porter, Erin Adair Hodges, Octavio Quintanilla, Annette Billings, Andrew McIlvaine, Miguel Morales, Sarah Chavez, Perry Shephard, and Maryfrances Wagner.

National Poetry Month
Launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996, National Poetry Month reminds the public that poets have an integral role to play 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. In 2021, the Academy of American Poets looks forward to celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of this annual celebration!
Each April, the Academy offers activities, initiatives, and resources so that anyone can join in National Poetry Month online and at home:
• Order (for free) and display the official 2021 National Poetry Month poster featuring lines by Joy Harjo
• Read about 30 ways to celebrate National Poetry Month online and at home
• Read about 30 ways to celebrate National Poetry Month in the virtual classroom
• Join the Academy of American Poets for its first-ever virtual Poetry & the Creative Mind gala on April 29
• Find online poetry readings and events on our Poetry Near You calendar, and add your own 
• Encourage students in grades 5 – 12 to participate in the 2021 Dear Poet Project
• Sign up for Poem-a-Day and enjoy a free daily poem in your inbox, this month curated by award-winning poet Jane Hirshfield
• Follow the thousands of celebrations taking place on social media with the official hashtag #NationalPoetryMonth and follow the Academy of American Poets on Twitter and Instagram @POETSorg
• Share a #pocketpoem on Poem in Your Pocket Day on April 29

www.poets.org/national-poetry-month

ANNETTE HOPE BILLINGS is an African-American Kansas poet, playwright, actress and nurse, who now offers by sharing her poetry and prose. She has written two collections of poetry, one-act plays and numerous short stories.
Annette’s readers have dubbed her “the Maya of the Midwest,” a moniker she allows with all due humility and gratitude. Known for her performance delivery style, she has been received enthusiastically in many diverse venues.
Her first book of poems, A Net Full of Hope, garnered the Topeka, Kansas, 2015 ARTSConnect Arty Award for Literature.
Her second book, Descants for a Daughter, is a collection of affirmations/meditations and very timely.
Annette’s third and newest work, Just Shy of Stars, is now available!
anetfullofhope.com

ERIN ADAIR-HODGES is the author of Let’s All Die Happy, winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. Recipient of The Sewanee Review’s Allen Tate Prize and the Loraine Williams Prize from The Georgia Review, her work has been featured in such places as PBS NewsHour, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus and more. Born and raised in New Mexico, she is now an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Central Missouri and the co-editor of Pleiades. www.erinmolly.com

OCTAVIO QUINTANILLA is the author of the poetry collection, If I Go Missing (Slough Press, 2014) and served as the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of San Antonio, TX. His poetry, fiction, translations, and photography have appeared, or are forthcoming, in journals such as Salamander, RHINO, Alaska Quarterly Review, Pilgrimage, Green Mountains Review, Southwestern American Literature, The Texas Observer, Existere: A Journal of Art & Literature, and elsewhere. His Frontextos (visual poems) have been published in Poetry Northwest, Gold Wake Live, Newfound, Chachalaca Review, Chair Poetry Evenings, Red Wedge, The Museum of Americana, About Place Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, The Windward Review, Tapestry, Twisted Vine Literary Arts Journal, & The Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas. 
 
Octavio’s visual work has been exhibited at the Southwest School of Art, Presa House Gallery, Equinox Gallery, UTRGV-Brownsville, the Weslaco Museum, Aanna Reyes Gallery in San Antonio, TX, Our Lady of the Lake University, AllState Almaguer art space in Mission, El Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos, The Walker’s Gallery in San Marcos, TX, and in the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center / Black Box Theater in Austin, TX. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Texas and is the regional editor for Texas Books in Review and poetry editor for The Journal of Latina Critical Feminism & for Voices de la Luna: A Quarterly Literature & Arts Magazine. Octavio teaches Literature and Creative Writing in the M.A./M.F.A. program at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas. 

Instagram @writeroctavioquintanilla
Twitter @OctQuintanilla

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