Here are two poetry video series published by The Academy of American Poets that educators who teach poetry will want to add to their virtual resource kits.

The first is P.O.P.: Poets on Poetry by poet-photographer Rachel Eliza Griffiths "featuring contemporary American poets who read both an original poem and a poem by another poet, after which they reflect on their choice. They then answer a question contributed anonymously by a poet in the series, and leave their own question for another to answer" (Griffiths).  There's an article about the series on poets.org. 

You can access videos from both series on the Academy of American Poets YouTube channel.

I've added a new current to the poetic voices that flow through Poetry River: poems of resilience.

These poems convey strength, persistence, hope, ingenuity, and imagination in the face of oppression, abuse, illness, or loss--subjects often omitted from textbook anthologies which tend to lean away from topics considered impolite to discuss at the dinner table or controversial to bring into the classroom.

In the initial group of poems highlighted in this new section of Poetry River's poems page, you'll find poems about emerging from child abuse and substance abuse, persisting within an environment of neglect or disapproval, and holding onto hope in a childhood riddled with death--of parents, cousins, neighbors, siblings, and friends.

Here is one of the selections also available in video form, Patricia Smith's "Building Nicole's Mama."

Published in 2013 by Persea Books, Mitchell Douglas’s autobiographical second collection \blak\ \al-fe bet\: Poems blends personal, American, and Southern history, with elegy and praise. It is a collection rich in place and family.

There’s the way he misses his grandmother, Mamie Lee, the matriarch of his family, “like an ache” - something she used to say to him and the rest of her grandchildren (The Poets Weave). His grandparents were sharecroppers in Alabama and as a child, Douglas often took the train from Louisville to visit them (“Writing Home” - Louisville Magazine).

There are poems that evoke history - the way “Tallahatchie” weaves together Douglas's teaching of Marilyn Nelson’s A Wreath for Emmett Till (a crown of sonnets) with his experience following a white pickup truck with Mississippi plates during a lightning storm while grief, anger, sorrow, and determination rise inside him - “no cotton gin fans, no barbed wire clues, just my pen...living and mourning at 30 MPH.” The poem’s close - “the classroom, no safer” - is one that will spark reflection and discussion.

Douglas also introduces a new six-line form: the fret, of which there are three in the collection.

Echoing the blues theme of his persona collection about Donny Hathaway, Cooling Board, the fret builds on the visual framework of a guitar's neck. Each line begins with the letter of the corresponding string (EADGBE), and vertical caesuras break the lines into three parts, as in this excerpt from “The Sorrows (A Fret in Three Chords)":

With \blak\ \al-fe bet\, Douglas, a founding member of Affrilachian poets, offers readers personal connections and teachers curriculum connections.  Maurice Manning calls it “a book of profound grief,” while Patricia Smith says “every line is threaded with funk and ferocity.”

To hear Douglas read his poems, listen to the related The Poets Weave podcast on Indiana public radio. There’s also a  teacher’s guide available for the book by Marilyn Nelson that Douglas references in “Tallahatchie”.

In "When the Last Tree Stands Alone" Climbing PoeTree melds visual art, spoken-word poetry, music, and theater in the service of environmental justice.

For a decade, Alixa and Naima, who define themselves as "boundary-breaking soul-sisters," have performed and taught all over the globe, empowering people to leverage their own creativity to inspire change. 

Fueled by their belief that "creativity is the antidote to violence and destruction," they seek, through art, "to challenge injustice and misrepresentations in the mainstream media, to expose harsh realities and engender even more powerful hope" (Climbing PoeTree - Bio). 

Pulsing above the instrumental and vocal background rhythms in this multimedia performance, the dual-voice style of their spoken-word mesmerizes. On the circular backdrop, evocative of a mandala, visuals shift from lush to industrial, vibrant to grey, amplifying their words. Alixa's and Naima's gestures add another element to the performance, particularly moving as they say "one hand clapping sounds a lot like the rhythms we lost in generations who sang even as they departed."

"When the Last Tree Stands Alone" raises awareness about grim climate changes escalating while most human beings stand by "too afraid to look where we're headed." Yet, instead of leaving viewers and listeners despondent,  they insist "we were born right now for a reason," asking "what will be the message of the legacy we've left?" Urgency permeates the work, conveyed through image and sound, as well as through direct assertions such as "every moment, you are choosing to live or you are waiting."

Alixa and Naima also write curriculum, teaching frequently in high schools.  I imagine this work woven into a lesson during biology, earth science, or AP Environmental, as a spark for discussion about climate policy in government or global studies classes, in English class alongside other poems that speak to the theme of environmental justice or that serve as calls to action, or in digital video or music or art classes as a spark to inspire collaboration between student artists across multiple forms of creative expression.