Celebrate National Poetry Month!

National Poetry Month, celebrated each April, invites us to explore the transformative power of poetic expression. Established in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets, this annual observance encourages people of all ages to discover new voices, revisit beloved classics, and perhaps even craft their own poetry verse.

Throughout the month, we invite you to explore the wealth of poetic resources available through the South Carolina State Library. Our collection showcases diverse voices that capture the full spectrum of human experience - from joy to sorrow, wonder to reflection.

Our shelves hold treasures from celebrated South Carolina poets and emerging talents alike. Browse our curated poetry collections and discover South Carolina's own poetic traditions.
Whether you're a longtime poetry enthusiast or just beginning to explore this art form, National Poetry Month offers the perfect opportunity to let words inspire, challenge, and move you. Take a moment to immerse yourself in the musical language, vivid imagery, and emotional resonance that only poetry can provide.

Discover how poems can transform our understanding of ourselves and the world around us!
 

On the Shelves

Cover of One River, One Boat: Occasional Poems and Other Stories.

One River, One Boat: Occasional Poems and Other Stories

Marjory Heath Wentworth

Former poet laureate of South Carolina, Marjory Wentworth’s compilation of work with subject matter spanning from war,, to grief and loss, to politics, and more.

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Cover of Twenty: South Carolina Poetry Fellows.

Twenty: South Carolina Poetry Fellows

Kwame Senu Neville Dawes

20 Palmetto State writers who have received the state’s highest honor in creative writing present five of their favorite poems and tell readers what these works reveal about their lives as poets. Each has won a Poetry Fellowship from the South Carolina Arts Commission during the period 1977-2004.

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Cover of On the National Language: The Poetry of America's Endangered Tongues.

On the National Language: The Poetry of America's Endangered Tongues

B. A. Van Sise

Through art photography and prose, this book addresses the fragility, beauty, and cultural value of preserving endangered languages, particularly Indigenous languages, at a time when Indigenous and diversity issues are at the forefront of our national conversations. In a groundbreaking project turned into a national touring exhibition, endangered-language speaker, poet, and photojournalist B. A. Van Sise worked with endangered-language speakers, learners, and revitalizers across three years and an entire continent to showcase some of the natural beauties of their languages and lands, highlighting, in particular, American diversity and its many Indigenous communities. Augmented by nine contributors from diverse cultural groups, On the National Language is a journey into both the challenges and opportunities faced by revitalization efforts, as well as a testament to the beauty and poetry of these many languages themselves.

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Cover of The Eagle’s Mile.

The Eagle’s Mile

James Dickey

In this new work, Dickey edges away from the narrative-based poems of his previous books and gives instead more primacy to the language in which he writes. His poetry gains flexibility, and his poetic power becomes even surer and more clearly expressed.

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Cover of Stray Latitudes: Poems.

Stray Latitudes: Poems

Dan Leach

The poems in Dan Leach's debut collection present lyrical portraits of dying (if not already dead) suburban neighborhoods in South Carolina. Stalled-out construction sites, abandoned shopping malls, and builder-grade houses that seem haunted before they're even sold--these are the doomed spaces that populate Leach's work.  Stray  Latitudes investigates the spiritual and geographical crises of the New South, pitting the individual need for identity against the recent swell of nationalism and the ongoing creep of capitalism. Like the vagrant creature for which the book is named, these are poems that scratch and claw in their search for a place to call home.

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Cover of Traveling Mercy.

Traveling Mercy

Jennifer Bartell

Traveling Mercy navigates the journeys of a Black woman from rural South Carolina. Her travels transcend time as she encounters history, nature, and grief. She sits with the eldest residents before her birth, with the first ancestor who came to these shores, with her parents through their marriage, and through her own loneliness in the wake of their deaths. Planting as she harvests, this book is a lament and a love story to survival.

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Cover of Night Bloomer.

Night Bloomer

Jane Zenger

First, right away: Jane Zenger's debut poetry collection, Night Bloomer, is nothing short of stunning and all encompassing, and I suggest reading it all in one sitting like I did. And if you can do so, be prepared to be blown away. For these are not the poems of a beginning poet, but instead the beautifully written reminiscences of a woman who has led a very full life indeed, from the extended death of a loved one to near-death experiences herself. Then there's the empathy that shines throughout--during her many travels all over the globe, as well as in her deep and abiding love of Cedar Creek, the small South Carolina patch of land on which she lives, and all its creatures. Yet never does she overdramatize an existence that by any standards has been dramatic, and instead, over and over, places herself--sometimes humorously--within the center of lived experience. As the great poet, W. B. Yeats said, the only two things worth writing about are sex and the dead, and in these poems, Jane Zenger has done both well.

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Cover of I Only Left for Tea: Poems.

I Only Left for Tea: Poems

Al Black

We return here often,” " says Al Black in the book's title poem, "to resume mid-sentence our conversation upon my deck." That's the feel of this book, a kind of wide-ranging conversation with a friend. Even as the book teases out in confessional poems the relation between the past and the present, the author's origins in the Midwest and his life now in the American South, and even as it opens out into broader perspective in voices and stories that spin through the heart of the book, it comes back to the quiet intimacy and vulnerability that drives this collection. Leavetaking and loss haunt the book, but a desire for connection and continuity keeps us coming back to the deck for that "gift of time together.

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Cover of Meet Me Where I Am: An Uplifting Collection of Creative Expressions.

Meet Me Where I Am: An Uplifting Collection of Creative Expressions

Lynne Cope Hummell

An uplifting collection of creative expressions This book is a rich, unique tapestry created with threads of hope, humor, love, faith and compassion that will inspire others who give of themselves relentlessly in their role as caregivers. Dementia care may, at times, seem to unravel the threads of family life as caregivers navigate this difficult journey. Meet Me Where I Am is a vision created by caregivers who conquered the summit. They decided to share the joy, humor, and wisdom that they gained through their personal ascent. We hope that it will help you, too.

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Cover of Wordplay for Kids: A Sourcebook of Poems, Rhymes, and Read-Alouds.

Wordplay for Kids: A Sourcebook of Poems, Rhymes, and Read-Alouds

Tim Wadham

nstilling a love of reading in a child pays dividends long after early literacy skills have been mastered. The key to successful programming is to make children become participants, encouraging a literary ear and love of the beauty of language itself. To help children develop artful language patterns, correct grammar, and a large and rich vocabulary, Wadham offers a range of complete programs for children ages 5-12 that introduce literature in a systematic way.

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Cover of The Southern Poetry Anthology.

The Southern Poetry Anthology

Stephen Gardner, William Wright

The Southern Poetry Anthology Volume I: South Carolina includes seventy-six contemporary poets with original, energetic, and unmistakable voices who have called the Palmetto state home.

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Cover of Coast Lines: A Poetry Anthology.

Coast Lines: A Poetry Anthology

Daniel Cross Turner, Libby Bernardin

Anthology of poems celebrating the ecology and wildlife along South Carolina's coasts.

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Cover of South Carolina Bards: Poetry Anthology 2025.

South Carolina Bards: Poetry Anthology 2025

James P. Wagner

An anthology of poetry by South Carolina Poets.

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Cover of African American Children's Poetry: Themes, Issues and Social Context.

African American Children's Poetry: Themes, Issues and Social Context

Wynn William Yarbrough

This work examines African American children's poetry through a variety of lenses: jazz poetics, the blues, nonsense verse, gender, and working class studies. African American children's poetry reveals legacies of segregation, the Great Migration north, and racial and gender reckonings in United States history. Works by Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Lauryn Hill, and Wynton Marsalis reveal warnings, scenes of empowerment, and moments of remembrance for children and young adults. This is the first academic book to investigate African American children's poetry thematically across two centuries, including hip hop lyrics and jazz poetry.

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Upcoming Event

Photo of Queen Quet against a swirling, cosmic background.

Celebrating de Gullah/Geechee Legacy with Queen Quet

April 28, 2026, 6:00 PM

Please join us for our next Speaker at the Center talk with  Queen Quet, Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation as she celebrates the 30th anniversary of the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition at the South Carolina State Library.

This Week