2012
30 Days, 30 Poets on Tumblr:
Inspired by 2011's popular National Poetry Month Twitter feature, the Academy of American Poets kicked off its second "30 Days, 30 Poets," hosting daily poets to curate the Academy's Tumblr feed. Browse a gallery of popular posts, selected by the Poets.org staff and our Tumblr audience.

2011
30 Guest Poets on Twitter:
In April 2011, the Academy of American Poets launched a month-long series of guest poets featured on its streaming Twitter feed: @poetsorg. Throughout each day during National Poetry Month, a selected poet had 24 hours to post his or her daily insights before passing the baton. One highlight was Richard Siken's poem "Anyway," which was tweeted one line at a time on April 4, 2011, and shaped by the responses of other tweeters.

2010
Poem on the Range:
The Poets.org community helped map the landscape of American poetry by uploading and geotagging videos and images featuring poetic landmarks, cities, dwellings, streets, roadside ephemera, and other places immortalized by iconic poems.

2009
Free Verse Photo Project:
Inspired by the 2009 National Poetry Month poster design, the Academy of American Poets invited people to capture ephemeral bits of verse on film as part of this year's celebration. Hundreds of participants recast their favorite lines of poetry in the most unusual places—T. S. Eliot's work appears in sugar spilled across a table, and William Carlos Williams famous words are revealed in the mud covering a wheelbarrow. View highlights from the ongoing Free Verse Project >.

2008
Poem In Your Pocket Day:
On April 17, poems traveled in pockets across the nation, carried and unfolded in bookstores, schools, workplaces, even in Grand Central Terminal in New York City. There, the Academy of American Poets staff handed out city-themed poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Claude McKay, Emma Lazarus, and more to morning commuters. The celebration, started in 2002 by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, spread coast to coast with Poem In Your Pocket Day festivities held for the first time at the Library of Congress and many more places. View more highlights from the first annual celebration >

2007
Poetfan Contest:
For this year's celebration, the Academy launched a national contest seeking "poetry's biggest fans"—people who demonstrate a passion for poetry that goes beyond the usual. After receiving hundreds of entries from poetry readers from all walks of life, the Academy chose six "poetfans" from across the country—including a chemist, an art professor and his class, and an independent bookseller—to lead National Poetry Month and have their innovative ways of engaging with poetry profiled on Poets.org.

2006
Poetry Read-a-Thon:
The Academy continued the celebration of National Poetry Month's 10th anniversary by launching a Poetry Read-a-Thon for students. Four thousand classrooms registered and seventy-five thousand students logged, recited and responded to poems for the project. Together with the American Poetry & Literacy Project, the Academy published a poetry anthology, How To Eat A Poem, with a foreword by U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser. 30,000 copies of the anthology were distributed for free across the nation. In addition, the Academy introduced the Life Lines project, collecting the most memorable lines of American poetry from poets and poetry lovers alike.

2005
10th Anniversary of National Poetry Month:
To mark this milestone, the Academy planned the largest NPM to date. Special projects included the 10 Years/10 Cities Reading Series, the debut of the new Poets.org, and the relaunch of the Poetry Book Club. To cap it all off, the Empire State Building honored the Academy with a special lighting on April 5 to mark the 10th anniversary of National Poetry Month.

2004
National Poetry Almanac:
This special project extended the celebration of poetry from April to all year round. The Almanac provided 365 days' worth of poetry highlights, activities, ideas, and history for individual exploration and classroom use. From debates and manifestoes to forms and techniques, from great poetry anthologies to poetry landmarks across the country, the National Poetry Almanac provided a daily dose of poetry, all year long.

2003
National Poetry Map:
Focusing on "poetry in your community,” the Academy debuted a National Poetry Map of America, with state-by-state listings of poets, poetry journals, presses, organizations, conferences, bookstores, events, and writing programs, and much more. In addition, the Academy partnered with the American Poetry & Literacy Project to promote and distribute free copies of Across State Lines: America's 50 States as Represented in Poetry.

2002
Langston Hughes Centenary Exhibit:
This year's celebration centered on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Langston Hughes. In honor of this milestone, and to celebrate a brilliant artist's contribution to American poetry, Hughes was featured on the 2002 NPM poster, and we created a special Langston Hughes Centenary Exhibit. We also teamed up with Langston Hughes Poetry Day to sponsor the largest poetry reading group in the world on April 2 at the University of Kansas.

2001
American Poet Stamp Project:
The Academy invited the public to visit Poets.org and “vote” for the poets they would most like to see on a postage stamp. In all, more than 10,000 people cast their ballots, nominating a total of 205 poets for future stamps. Langston Hughes was by far the most popular poet, collecting over 2,500 votes. In  June, the Academy sent our completed petition to the United States Postal Service, which issued a Langston Hughes stamp in January 2002.

1998
Great APLseed Giveaway:
In 1998, the Academy teamed up with the American Poetry & Literacy (APL) Project to distribute 100,000 free books of poetry from New York to California during April. On April 22, the President and First Lady hosted a Millennium Evening at the White House featuring Poets Laureate Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass, and Rita Dove.