The Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers partner to create the National Student Poets Program (NSPP), the country’s highest honor for youth poets presenting original work. Five outstanding high school poets whose work exhibits exceptional creativity, dedication to craft, and promise are selected annually for a Year of Service as national poetry ambassadors. This chapbook features the top works from these five poets.
In celebration of the National Student Poets Program’s fifth year, a special 5th Anniversary edition of the chapbook was produced in 2016. This chapbook features updates on the student poets from Classes 2012-15, a collaborative poem between the first four Classes, biographies of all of the jurors from the past five years, and more.
In March 2018, the Poetry Coalition, a national alliance of literary organizations dedicated to promoting the value poets bring to our culture, launched its second year of programming centered on the theme “Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live: Poetry & the Body.” The inspiration for the 2018 theme came from the poem “Flores Woman” by Tracy K. Smith, U.S. Poet Laureate. To respond to the theme, alumni of the National Student Poets Program collaborated on a chapbook featuring original poems that address writing and the body.