April is National Poetry Month, inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996.
Ohio’s poetic lineage stretches back nearly to the founding of the state. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper – poet, author, lecturer, and abolitionist – was the first female teacher at Union Seminary (a school for free African Americans) in Wilberforce, Ohio. Her Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects was published in 1857, and one of her poems appeared in The Anti-Slavery Bugle (published in New Lebanon, Ohio) on April 20, 1861.
Hart Crane was born in 1899 in Garrettsville, Ohio. Near Case Western Reserve University’s campus in Cleveland, there is a small marker indicating where Crane’s house once stood on East 115th Street just off of Euclid Avenue. A statue of the poet can also be found nearby, behind Kelvin Smith Library. A more abstract Hart Crane memorial sculpture is located elsewhere in Cleveland, on the banks of the Cuyahoga River. Crane’s most famous long poetic work, “The Bridge,” is inspired by and indebted to the poet’s adoption of New York City as his new hometown (Read the first poem from it, about the Brooklyn Bridge, here), but his relatively small body of work does contain a few Ohio-centric poems, with “Porphyro in Akron” being perhaps the most obvious and “Euclid Avenue” being another example of a poem relating to Crane’s native state. Learn more about the influence of Ohio’s roads and bridges to Crane’s work online.
Ohio has been home to some of the giants of American poetry, including Paul Laurence Dunbar (born in Dayton), former US Poet Laureate Rita Dove (from Akron), Langston Hughes (who grew up in Cleveland), Amit Majmudar (the first Ohio Poet Laureate), Mary Oliver (born in Maple Heights), and many more!
And that legacy continues unabated! Below are some Ohio Center for the Book staff recommendations to introduce you to the vibrant contemporary poetry scene in our state…
We Look Better Alive by Ali Black
April 2025 | Burnside Review Press
Cleveland’s Ali Black‘s first full-length collection is out at the end of April. Her last book, the chapbook If It Heals At All, was a finalist for the Ohioana Book Award in poetry. The Cleveland Review of Books recently published a couple poems from the new book.
Something About Living by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
April 2024 | University of Akron Press
Did you know the most recent winner of the National Book Award in poetry was published in Ohio? Seattle, Washington’s Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s Something About Living was published by the University of Akron Press as part of the Akron Series in Poetry. Tuffaha’s reading at the 2024 National Book Awards finalist reading is available on YouTube.
I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times by Taylor Byas
August 2023 | Soft Skull Press
We’re really happy for Cincinnati’s Taylor Byas. In addition to visiting the Ohio Center for the Book last April, her first poetry collection won the Maya Angelou Book Award, the Ohioana Book Award in poetry, and a BCALA Literary Award. Her next collection, Resting Bitch Face, comes out in August and is already one of Roxane Gay’s Audacious Book Club picks.
Oily Doily by Alyssa Perry
September 2024 | Bench Editions
Important Groups by Hilary Plum
January 2025 | Community Mausoleum
New and innovative small presses are popping up in Ohio all the time. Take these two recent examples: Bench Editions in Cincinnati, and Community Mausoleum in Cleveland. Both publish beautifully minimally designed works of poetry and prose. Perry’s Oily Doily is her first full-length collection. Plum’s Important Groups is a single long poem. Both writers currently live in the Cleveland area. Read Perry’s “Filling Station” at Annulet. Read Plum’s “Important Groups” at the American Poetry Review.
