​FAVORITE POEM PROJECT
How it all began...​
United States Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky began the Favorite Poem Project back in 1998. It was designed to bring communities together by celebrating, documenting and encouraging poetry’s role in our lives. As a result, in small towns and cities across America, firemen, teachers, farmers, nurses, doctors, carpenters, plumbers, factory workers, children, policemen, vets, seniors, etc - poets and non-poets alike - come together every April to share their favorite poems.​ ​
2022 Favorite Poem Project

In partnership with Friends Of Conkling Hall, the 17th annual Favorite Poem Project gathered in person this year for an afternoon of community poetry!

Emcee Claire North hosted 21 local poets and musicians as neighbors and friends listened to their favorite -- and often original - works of poetry.

Click below for a list of readers and the favorite poems they shared!
2021 Favorite Poem Project

In partnership with our friends at Conkling Hall, the 2021 Favorite Poem Project gathering occurred online via YouTube.

25 poet-participants read (and sang) both favorite and original poems. And because the event was virtual, participants were able to share their poems from their homes in Maine, Vermont and Virginia, and attendees tuned in from as far away as Ireland!

You can tune in from wherever you are, too! Click the button below to watch a video of the whole event.
2020 My Favorite Poem Project
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In 2020, in the face of social distancing requirements due to COVID-19,we asked  people to send us their favorite poems by email to be posted on our website and Facebook pages rather than staging a 2-hour event.  Each day in April, a My Favorite Poem was posted.  The complete text of the poems appear below:

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​Rensselaerville Library's
​

2023 Celebration

of

National Poetry Month
 ​Poem-A-Day Project
​
The Annual Poem-A-Day Project, hosted by the Rensselaerville Library, celebrates National Poetry Month with a new poem by a local poet for each of April’s 30 days. Launched in 2017, it has showcased 210 poems by 120 local poets ringing in over 16,000 pageviews.
​Check out each year's poems by clicking on the  buttons below.
2022 COMMUNITY POEM
There's A Poem In This Place...
On April 30, 2022, Rensselaerville Library invited Community members to contribute to a Community Poem at the annual Favorite Poem Project celebration. They were prompted to add 1-2 lines to the phrase "There's a poem in this place..." borrowed from Amanda Gorman's 2021 Inaugural Poem.

​The verses, submitted by 27 poets, can be read by clicking on the button below.
2021 COMMUNITY POEM
Remember to Pause, Pause to Remember:
A Community Poem
In April 2021, Rensselaerville Library invited Community members to contribute to a Community Poem, a compilation of verse written to commemorate the year gone by. 

​The verses, submitted by 21 poets aged 7-70+, were compiled into a poem titled, I Remember. It was premiered at the Library's May 29 Cocktail Party. The poem and the unedited verses are published below: 
Poetry Month 2015, friends and neighbors far and wide grew the community poem "Song of Ourselves".