The Academy of American Poets on Monday launched a mobile version of its online poetry archive at www.poets.org/mobile. Users can now access the archive, which contains more than twenty-five hundred poems as well as hundreds of biographies and essays, using an iPhone and most other mobile devices. The new service is free.
"I have always believed that poetry has a necessary place in daily life," says Academy executive director Tree Swenson. "As the first arts organization to offer mobile content, the Academy of American Poets affirms its imperative to connect people to poetry by creating free and simple access for everyone." Poems can be browsed by author, title, occasion, and form as well as searched by keyword. Users may preview the mobile archive here.
The new component of the Academy's Web site was unveiled three weeks before the beginning of the organization's signature program, National Poetry Month. On Wednesday, the Academy announced the establishment of a national Poem in Your Pocket Day, April 17, during which Americans are encouraged to carry poems with them and celebrate "the power of the poem to both transport a reader and be transported by one." Also in April, the Academy will hold its sixth annual benefit, Poetry and the Creative Mind, featuring Candace Bushnell, Katie Couric, Jonathan Demme, Dianne Reeves, Meryl Streep, and others. The event will take place on April 1 at Lincoln Center in New York City.
