ARE YOU AVERSE TO REHEARSING YOUR VERSE? Public readings like this one, by the UW-Eau Claire student literary group NOTA at the Volume One Gallery, are an important part of the Chippewa Valley’s poetry scene.

April is National Poetry Month, a month-long national celebration of poetry established in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets as a way to increase awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States.

Poetry is written from a specific place and time, which in the case of regional writers is our place and time. Poetry can call attention to things we perhaps have gotten too familiar with to still see; poetry often celebrates the everyday that we live through but perhaps are not fully mindful of. It can polish the ordinary until it becomes extraordinary again.

The concept is to widen the attention of individuals and the media to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our complex poetic heritage, and to poetry books and journals of wide aesthetic range and concern. The goal is to increase the visibility and availability of poetry in popular culture while acknowledging and celebrating poetry’s ability to sustain itself in the many places where it is practiced and appreciated, as well as to introduce its value and pleasures to those places where it is often not. Nationally, the occasion features hundreds of readings and celebrations, as well as many different kinds of events. “Poetry in Your Pocket” prints poems on small cards to be carried around and given away. “Poetry Off the Shelf” features poems appearing on coffee cups, on local buses, and even in gumball machines.

Thousands of poems are available online at such sites as poetry.org, Poetry 180 (www.loc.gov/poetry/180), and poetryhunter.com, or to be heard at PoetryOutLoud.org and PoetryArchive.org among others, while services such as Poem-A-Day and The Writer’s Almanac email you a poem daily.

Anyone who hasn’t looked lately at the number and variety of books written by poets from our area in any of our neighborhood stores will be surprised and impressed. In our immediate area shelves of these books can be found, onsite and/or online, at places such as Crossroad Books and The Local Store, among others.

We should buy and read local poetry for the same reasons that we support local businesses and purchase local food. And perhaps for a few others.

Poetry is written from a specific place and time, which in the case of regional writers is our place and time. Poetry can call attention to things we perhaps have gotten too familiar with to still see; poetry often celebrates the everyday that we live through but perhaps are not fully mindful of. It can polish the ordinary until it becomes extraordinary again. It can reawaken a sense of beauty, awe, and the subtle complexities of where we all are and what we are going through together.

This April, during National Poetry Month, everyone should buy a book by a local poet, or more than one, and give it to a friend, or many friends. And you might even want to keep one, or more than one, for yourself.

Walt Whitman said that in order to have great poetry we must have great audiences. So do your part. Go listen to some poetry at a reading, read some to yourself or others. Write a poem. Buy a book. Give them both away. That’s what poetry is for.

Bruce Taylor is the current poet laureate of Eau Claire. Among poetry readings this April that are already scheduled are: April 7 and 29 (both at 7pm) at The Local Store, 205 N. Dewey St.; April 12 at 7pm at The L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library, 400 Eau Claire St.; April 21 at 5pm at The Janet Carson Gallery, 316 Eau Claire St.; and also April 21 – all day – at the Heyde Center for the Arts, 3 S. High St., Chippewa Falls. More information is available online from those organizations.