30 Poets in 30 Days

Welcome to Larksong's celebration of National Poetry Month - 30 Poets in 30 Days! This annual event brings together poets from all over the country with poets local to Nebraska. This year we asked Larksong members first to fill half the reading slots, and the other half we filled during a visit to the Associated Writing Program's Conference and Book Fair in Seattle. Most of those were new acquaintances and this event was their introduction to Larksong. The mix of new and familiar allowed us to reach in this one program one of the primary objectives of all the programs we offer: to bring new voices to Nebraska audiences and help send Nebraska voices out into the world. Nebraska has a rich and active literary life and this 30 Poets program is designed to celebrate it.

We recorded 30 poets for this event - 31 actually, there's a bonus double reading on April 6! We reached them via Zoom, visited them in their homes, found them at work, at the airport, and at the Associated Writing Program Conference in Seattle. The poems range from heartbreaking to laugh-out-loud funny, and like such emotions in life they are all mixed up in this list, so you never know what you'll find when you click on a link and start watching. Be ready for anything!

The link to each daily reading will become "live" at 3 am CST on the date they're listed. To watch, click on the 30 Poets 30 Day thumbnail image. The video will play in your browser. Once live the link will stay live so you can watch as many times as you like. You can also find them on YouTube on Larksong's channel under 30 Poets in 30 Days. There's even a playlist!

A big thank you to all the poets involved!

Enjoy!

April 27 - Kelly Madigan

Thursday, April 27, 2023

Heading home from AWP at last. The Seattle Airport was fitting place to record my longtime travel partner, Kelly Madigan. She is a poet on the move, always going somewhere exciting and doing something interesting, paying close attention to the world and then writing about it in poems and essays that take my breath away. Follow her on Facebook to read her posts with a new poem each day of April. You'll be glad you did!

Kelly is a writer with roots in both Iowa and Nebraska, and an advocate for conservation in the Loess Hills. Her book Getting Sober: A Practical Guide to Making It Through the First 30 Days, published by McGraw-Hill, is an effort to quickly get tools into the hands of people struggling to get sober, and is based in part on her 30 years of work as a licensed drug and alcohol counselor. Kelly is also an award-winning poet and essayist, whose awards include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in creative writing, and the Distinguished Artist Award in Literature from the Nebraska Arts Council. She teaches creative writing workshops with an environmental focus through Larksong Writers Place. Her collection of poetry, The Edge of Known Things, was published by SFASU press.

www.kmadigan.com