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A Thirtieth Birthday Celebration for National Poetry Month: Featuring Book Recs from Local Poets

April 8, 2026

National Poetry Month turns thirty this April! For great local poetry events, check out the Get Lit! Festival. The wonderful local poet Sarah Rooney hosts a “Poetry for Everyone” event monthly at the Shadle Park Library, and their next session will be Tuesday, April 23^rd. The American Academy of Poets website also highlights fun poetry activities on their website to honor the month’s thirtieth birthday.

As part of our own celebration, we’ve asked the presenters of our upcoming Inland Northwest Poetry Salon (May 16^th) to share some of their favorite poetry collections. All of their recommendations are available to check out at Spokane Public Library.

Poet and artist Margaret Albaugh recommends, “My current favorite is Lord of the Butterflies by Andrea Gibson (which I borrowed through the library). Their poetry makes me feel like they have been in conversation with my night thoughts—all the hopes, anxieties, fears, and wonders that come up for you at random times when you can’t sleep. They’ve always aimed to be accessible in their work so then I feel I can suggest their work to anyone—a teen interested in spoken word or a mother who has never read poetry. They don’t shy from politics which is important to me because everyone’s lives have been politicized. And I enjoy their lyricism and wordplay.”

Poet Grace Anne Anderson says, “I always love to recommend some of my favorite NW poets, like Rick Barot or Keetje Kuipers, who is coming to the Get Lit! Festival this year! Within the library catalog, I want to recommend the late Seattle-based poet, Martha Silano’s 2024 collection, This One We Call Ours. It is a devastating, yet hopeful collection circling ecological crisis, climate grief, and the power of paying attention. It was the winner of the 2024 Blue Lynx Prize for Poetry and Lynx House Press describes it as ‘a passionate cry on behalf of the earth and all who dwell upon it.’ Check it out!”

Poet, publisher, and arts organizer Greg Bem says, “Poetry helps elevate and channel voices and truths across humanity, including those in the margins. I love recommending to friends the collection Forest of Noise by Mosab Abu Toha, whose work is an exquisite glimpse into the textures of Palestine and the challenges faced by Palestinians across oppression and isolation. Toha’s work may feel raw at first glance, but it is all the layers. It is nuanced and wondrous and filled with range of insight and resilience. This book will introduce you, again and again, to new paths you can take as a reader to understand and explore connection-making and empathy.”

Poet Linea Jantz recommends, “When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz. If you have ever watched someone you care about struggle with addiction and/or the addiction of someone they love, these poems are very relatable. The book weaves dark humor, gorgeous language, family dynamics, passion, and myth.

“One of my favorite stanzas, from the poem ‘Prayers or Oubliettes’:

The world has tired of tears.

We weep owls now. They live longer. 

They know their way in the dark.

“Side note: Diaz’s book Postcolonial Love Poem is also one of my favorite poetry collections of all time.”

Moscow’s Poet Laureate alumna Stacy Boe Miller recommends Richard Siken’s I Do Know Some Things. “While recovering from a stroke, Siken tried to remember things about his life by making lists. Those lists became 77 unsettling and honest prose poems. If someone asked for a map on how to write the hardest parts of their story, I would recommend this book. He courageously writes about childhood scars, the heartbreak the dead leave behind, and his physical recovery after the stroke—directly and without ornament. I will read it again and again.”

Poet, arts organizer, and Mother Media author Sarah Rooney recommends: “The Serious World by Laura Read. This is a beautiful exploration of women, their experiences, and connections. Laura Read processes grief and joy with a strong conversational tone that invites the reader in. Through elegant verse and raw reflection, Read evokes bodied instances throughout her life, pulling at our empathy and self-recognition.”

“Also, Falling Back in Love with Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls by Kai Cheng Thom. This collection is marvelous in its epistolary approach. Thom writes as a Chinese-Canadian trans woman from the framework of a mental health community worker, sex therapist, and ex-sex worker. Through the collection, she writes letters to herself, past Johns she encountered, the liars, the lost, those who have expressed hatred for her existence like J.K. Rowling, and the church she was brought up in. At the end of each letter is a prompt for self-reflection. The subtle elegance and compassion here for others and self is absolutely beautiful. This is a true work of catharsis, self-love, and growth towards processing trauma and healing.”

Spokane Poet Laureate Mery Noel Smith recommends What Kind of Woman by Kate Baer. “What impresses me about Baer’s work is not her use of big words or complicated notions, it’s her big heart roaring through these poems, wild and clear, that has me returning to her work over and over again for the plain truth.”

Mery, like Linea, also loves Natalie Diaz’s When My Brother Was an Aztec. “This is a collection on grief that I really relate to on a personal level. Diaz writes of her late brother’s addiction and the real effects on the family without creating optimistic blindness. These poems give me a powerful example of how to grieve the loss and honor the brutal truth that comes with loving an addict.”

Poet Elisa Vigil recommends: “Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light is a collection of 50 of Joy Harjo’s best poems. The collection begins with her early poems, which possess this dreamy, almost sort of nervous energy. Then she gets older and blows us away with her thoughtfulness and deep care for the world. I think about these poems often; lines she’s written often get stuck in my head like a song.”

Thank you to the 2026 Inland Northwest Poetry Salon presenters for their book recommendations. We’ll see you at the Salon on May 16^th!