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The folks over at the Academy of American Poets have decided that April 17th will be the first-ever national "Poem in Your Pocket" day. It's been an annual event in New York City since 2002, and this year it's going national. Or perhaps global.

The entire "movement" in NYC was inspired by this poem by children's author Beatrice Schenk de Regniers called "Keep a Poem in Your Pocket":

Keep a Poem in Your Pocket
by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers

Keep a poem in your pocket
And a picture in your head
And you'll never feel lonely
At night when you're in bed.

The little poem will sing to you
The little picture bring to you
A dozen dreams to dance to you
At night when you're in bed.

So - -
Keep a picture in your pocket
And a poem in your head
And you'll never feel lonely
At night when you're in bed.

You can download a pocket-sized version of this poem from NYC.gov.

Teachers have been using "poem in my pocket" activities for the past few years as well. Many of them relate to one of my favorite children's poets, Tony Mitton, who has written a marvelous poem about keeping a poem in one's pocket as part of his poetry collection My Hat and All That:

In my pocket,
feeling round,
what can this be
that I've found?

Pull it out to see
and - oooh!
Look: a poem
just for you.

Another great resource for use with kids? Bobbi Katz's book, Pocket Poems, illustrated by Marilyn Hafner. It leads off with "A Pocket Poem."

A Pocket Poem
by Bobbi Katz

With a poem in your pocket
and
a pocket in your pants
you can rock with new rhythms.
You can sing.
You can dance.
And wherever you go,
and whatever you do,
that poem in your pocket is going there, too.
read the rest here

But pocket poems aren't just for kids. This link will take you to an array of "pockets", each bearing a single word. At the top left, "frog" will get you a printable pocket-sized copy of "I'm Nobody! Who are You?" by Emily Dickinson. Below it, "roses" will bring you Shakespeare's Sonnet 130, which begins "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun". Both Shakespeare and Dickinson have more than one poem in the array, with poems by others including Sara Teasdale, Wilfred Owen, Gerard Manley Hopkins and more.

I hope you'll take some time between now and next Thursday to find a poem that fits your pocket, and that when Thursday, April 17th comes, you'll share it with some people in your corner of the world.

If you like Philip Pullman’s books (His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass), I Was a Rat!), you’ll be interested in this radio interview with him that aired last night on CBC Radio’s Writers & Company. The interview was Part 1 of 2, conducted by Eleanor Wachtel when Pullman was in Toronto for the Particles of Narrative conference.

Pullman talked about his childhood, his love of writing, Greek myth, religion, The Golden Compass, and more. You also get to hear an excerpt from the upcoming movie based on his book The Golden Compass (which is being adapted at the cost of a $150 million), and an excerpt of The Golden Compass read by Pullman–an excerpt with a cliffhanger that will make you want to read the book, if you haven’t already, or re-read it.

You can download the interview here, if you want to listen to it or have a copy. Archives are only kept online for four weeks, so you’ll want to get your copy now. You can also download it here, where they keep a few more back issues in the archives.

If you enjoy reading YA author interviews or want to discover new teen books you might enjoy, then YA Cafe is a blog you won’t want to miss. Marlene Perez (Unexpected Development), Mary E Pearson (Scribbler of Dreams), and Melissa Wyatt (Raising the Griffin), all YA writers themselves, regularly interview teen fiction writers about their books, and post those interviews on YA Cafe. Nancy Werlin (The Rules of Survival) and Cathy Atkins (Alt Ed) also interview YA authors, though less frequently.

A neat feature about YA Cafe interviews is that they are interactive. Readers are invited to post their own questions and the interviewed authors will answer them for one week following the posting of the interview.

The current interview is with K. L. Going, author of Saint Iggy. Past interviews have included A.M. Jenkins, author of Repossessed; Cynthia Leitich Smith, author of Tantalize; Laura Wiess, author of Such a Pretty Girl; and many more.

So if you like teen fiction, head on over to YA Cafe