Each April, the Academy of American Poets creates and distributes—for free—over 120,000 copies of the current National Poetry Month posters to U.S. schools, libraries, bookstores, and community centers to help promote the month-long celebration.

Download a PDF of the 2022 poster

 

Posters from Previous Years

 

National Poetry Month Poster 20162016 Poster
Design: Debbie Millman

The 2016 poster was designed by Debbie Millman and features lines of poetry by some of our greatest poets. Read a selection of the poetry featured on the poster in our anthology of poster poems.

 

2015 Poster
Design: Roz Chast

The 2015 poster was designed by 2014 National Book Award finalist and New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast. It features a line of poetry from Mark Strand's "Eating Poetry."

 

 

 

2014 Poster
Design: Chip Kidd

The 2014 poster features the lines "Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, / Missing me one place search another, / I stop somewhere waiting for you." from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself."

 

 

 

 

2013 Poster
Design: Jessica Helfand

The 2013 poster features the line "Write about your sorrows, your wishes, your passing thoughts, your belief in anything beautiful." from Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet.

 

2012 Poster, designed by Chin-Yee Lai

2012 Poster
Design: Chin-Yee Lai

The 2012 poster features the line "...wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life" from U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine's poem "Our Valley."

 

2011 Poster, designed by Stephen Doyle

2011 Poster
Design: Stephen Doyle

The 2011 poster features the line "bright objects hypnotize the mind" from Elizabeth Bishop's poem "A Word with You." Bishop was born February 8, 1911, so we celebrated her centennial in 2011.

 

2010 Poster, designed by Marian Bantjes

2010 Poster
Design: Marian Bantjes

The 2010 poster features the lines "We make a dwelling in the evening air, / In which being there together is enough." from Wallace Stevens's poem "Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour."

 

2009 Poster, designed by Paul Sahre

2009 Poster
Design: Paul Sahre

The 2009 poster features the lines "Do I dare / Disturb the universe?" from T. S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

 

2008 Poster

2008 Poster
Design: SpotCo

The 2008 poster features a line from Jay Wright's poem "The Healing Improvisation of Hair": I carried my life, like a stone, / in a ragged pocket, but I / had a true weaving song, a sly / way with rhythm, a healing tone.

 

2007 Poster

2007 Poster
Design: Christoph Niemann

The 2007 poster features a line from Walt Whitman's poem "As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days": And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements of any.


{C}

2006 Poster

2006 Poster
Design: Number Seventeen, NYC

{C}

2005 Poster

2005 Poster 
Design: Chip Kidd

The 2005 poster features Emily Dickinson's dress and a quote from her letters: "Nature is a haunted house—but Art—is a house that tries to be haunted."

2004 Poster

2004 Poster
Design: Milton Glaser

2003 Poster

2003 Poster
Design: Betsy Bell

2002 Poster

2002 Poster 
Design: Betsy Bell

2001 Poster

2001 Poster
Design: Betsy Bell

2000 Poster

2000 Poster
Design: Betsy Bell

1999 Poster

1999 Poster
Design: Betsy Bell

1998 Poster

1998 Poster
Painting: Jasper Johns, Map (1961). Oil on Canvas, 6'6" x 10'3-1/8" (198.2 x 314.7 cm) © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Design: Betsy Bell

1997 Poster

1997 Poster
Illustration: Edward Koren
Design: Jessica Weber

1996 Poster

1996 Poster
Photo: Arthur Tress
Design: Michael Ian Kaye

1999 Advertisement

1999 Magazine Advertisement 
Design: Bennett Book Advertising

1998 Postcard

1998 Postcard 
Andrew Carroll, Executive Director of the American Poetry & Literacy (APL) Project on the eve of his coast-to-coast drive to distribute 100,000 books on poetry.
Photo & Design: Betsy Bell

1998 Advertisement

1998 Magazine Advertisement 
Photo: Boris Godunov © William Wegman
Quotation: The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, Ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Design: Bennett Book Advertising

1997 Advertisement

1997 Magazine Advertisement 
Photo: Darius Kinsey, from Kinsey, Photographer, by Dave Bohn and Rodolfo Petschek, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers
Design: Betsy Bell