NYT launches poetry week

The New York Times is bringing back its poetry challenge on April 20 through April 24, with a five-day program built around a single poem. (nytimes.com) The Times said readers will get games, videos and writing prompts, and it framed the event as the Book Review’s second poetry challenge. The signup page says the series will arrive next week during National Poetry Month. (nytimes.com) The page pitches the challenge as a way to “close out National Poetry Month” by memorizing a poem, which gives the project a narrower aim than a general reading list or anthology package. It is being distributed through the Book Review newsletter system rather than as a one-day standalone feature. (nytimes.com) The format fits a broader push inside The Times to turn literary coverage into guided, interactive reading. In 2025, A.O. Scott was writing a monthly poetry column for The Times that used interactive presentation to walk readers through one poem at a time, according to an interview in Slate. (slate.com) That approach also tracks with how poetry organizations try to use April as an entry point for new readers. National Poetry Writing Month, known as NaPoWriMo, runs daily prompts and featured participants throughout April, and Poetry Foundation continues to use its site for poems, readings and poetry news. (napowrimo.net) (poetryfoundation.org) The Times has not presented this challenge as a contest with prizes or judges. The signup language describes participation as reading, watching, playing and writing around one poem over five days. (nytimes.com) That makes the event closer to a short course than to the newspaper’s better-known student contests. The Times’ student contest calendar, listed by outside education and writing resources, runs separate submissions for forms such as memoir, open letters and audio stories across the school year. (youngwritersproject.org) (youtube.com) For readers, the next date that matters is Sunday, April 20. That is when the five-day sequence starts, and the Times says it will run through Thursday, April 24. (nytimes.com)