‘Call on Your Creativity’ During National Poetry Month
April 14, 2025
• Needham’s poet laureate brings fresh eyes on poetry during National Poetry Month.
Mitchell Elementary fourth graders have a way with words.
When asked to convey an emotion through an animal, the students wrote classroom poems with descriptive language — a snail represented sadness, “With a shell like an anchor on its back,” and a giraffe illustrated relief, “Above the trees and my troubles.”
Anne Nydam, who facilitated those poems last month, hopes to inspire the same creativity in other pockets of the Needham community.
April is National Poetry Month, and as Needham’s first poet laureate, Nydam will host a series of events aimed at writing and appreciating poetry, a medium often overlooked.
“It’s so important that people do this,” Nydam said of the upcoming workshops. “I think we have such a tendency to think, ‘Oh, it’s not practical, it’s not going to get you a job,’ and no, the poet laureate [position] is not paying my mortgage, but people forget that you also need emotional health.”
Since Nydam’s onboarding, the Needham Free Public Library has ramped up its commitment to new and classic poetry, both through programming, physical displays and collections, Director Rob MacLean said.
The Cup and Chaucer, the library’s poetry discussion group created just before the poet laureate program, has seen a surge in participation over the last few months, said Tamara Dalton, the technical services supervisor and club’s founder. Starting with just five dedicated regulars last April, the group has grown to a consistent 18 members spanning generations, Dalton said.
Nydam has helped to increase awareness about poetry as an art form, as well as “to weave poetry into our lives, more so than it is now,” MacLean said.
“We’re seeing that success here at the library and with Anne’s events at the schools and at the CATH,” he said, “just in simple ways reminding people of the beauty and the power of poetry.”
This Wednesday, she will lead a poetry writing workshop at the library, where she’ll share a series of prompts for attendees to write their own poetry and, perhaps, step out of their comfort zone. She’ll also observe Great Poetry Reading Day at the Center at the Heights on April 28.
In the teen section of the library, a push pin poetry display invites passers-by to choose new words to pin to the board and play with word flow and expression without rules, MacLean said. Patrons can also create poetry postcards from a crafting kit available Monday through Saturday, Dalton said.
“People often have a sense that poetry is inaccessible, or they need to know certain things about language or writing scheme. That makes it feel much more inaccessible,” Dalton said. “It’s about trying and reading and relating it to your life and how it makes you feel and being in a supportive environment where it’s O.K. to take a guess and hear what other people have to say.”
For herself, Nydam is penning a poem every day this month, an exercise she finds stretches her creative muscles. She suggested others sign up for emailed poems, which is an easy way to engage with new writing.
Thinking on her favorite poems, particularly during spring, Nydam thinks back to lines from Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 29”:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
Reading poetry based on the current cultural moment or seasonal changes speaks to MacLean, who suggested “Take Me Out,” a series of baseball-themed poems by Bill Littlefield.
“I think National Poetry Month and the launch of the Major League Baseball season is a great time to dip into poetry that celebrates our great passions and our hobbies and our loves,” he said. “Maybe more so in winter time I read more serious things, but spring is a time of rebirth and getting out in the sunshine and all that stuff.”
Whether it’s Shakespeare, Sylvia Plath, Mary Oliver, Rupi Kaur or whoever else, everyone can find poetry for them, either at the library or digitally.
“We have hundreds of thousands of poets and poetry to choose from,” Dalton said, “and if you just search for a thing that you love, whatever that passion is or the season is, you can find a poem that speaks to you.”
There are those, however, who still may be skeptical. Nydam made a plea.
“You need the ability to call on your creativity. You need the ability to process the world around you and the emotions,” Nydam said. “You need the ability to empathize with how other people see the world and how other people are trying to express themselves.”
