April is National Poetry Month, and GoWYLD.net offers ways to celebrate online. We suggest you start by taking a look at the poetry offerings under the GoWYLD.net Literature Resources Subject guide.
Within this guide, you’ll find readings of poems, poetry magazines, criticism, study guides and more — all free to every Wyoming resident with their library card.
One we’d like to feature is Poets Onscreen, which allows you to hear contemporary poets reading their own works and their favorite classic poems (Yeats, Bronte, Poe). In some cases, the poets describe the inspiration for the poem. For example, check out Robert Bly reading his poem, “After Drinking All Night with a Friend, We Go Out in a Boat at Dawn to See Who Can Write the Best Poem.” You can also find Shakespeare’s sonnets in Poets Onscreen read by Patience Agbabi and Charles Wright.
According to their page, “each Poets on Screen reading gives students the chance to see and hear one poet’s interpretation of the work, prompting the discussion of what form alternative readings might take and how this reading has influenced their thoughts about the poem and other works they have studied.”
Poets Onscreen can be found in ProQuest Learning-Literature and in LION (Literature Online). If you try to access from LION, scroll down on the main page, click View Collection. You will then need to select 2002. Both LION and ProQuest Learning Literature are part of the GoWYLD.net suite.
Questions about the GoWYLD.net databases? Contact Wyoming State Library Database Instruction Librarian Chris Van Burgh at chris.vanburgh@wyo.gov or (307) 777-3642.