2026 National Poetry Month, Day 07 Gratitude

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American poet Jane Hirshfield and American poet Billy Collins

NPM 2026, Day 7 Gratitude

Any living poet you might send a word of gratitude to?

I'm thinking specifically of poets I owe a debt of gratitude (my own favorites are aging just as fast as I am). If you feel the same, I bet you can find a way to email them or comment on a social where they post. Google their name and "contact" to get some suggestions. Thank them while they live.

Above are my favorite living poets, each for different reasons. But both make me feel more alive and in touch with what matters. I will email/comment to them both this month. I don't figure I'll hear back. That's okay, they've spoken to me deeply already.

As with every post for NPM, you are welcomed to answer the question or also comment with either a poem you've found or with a poem you've written that you think will go with this day's message

I am incredibly grateful to the Australian poet and writer Jordie Albiston whom I have recently discovered. I'm sad that I am just a little too late to tell her that. I was so taken and inspired by this little poem, a variation on Shakespearean sonnet and a wonderful play on the rhyming scheme of them:

me

the woman in photo 'A'
is not me her smile be
too wide for the lens eh!
the woman in photo 'B'

is not me no frenzy see?
behind eyes the lady
in photo categorised 'C'
is definitely (capital D)

not me first & finally
the light is low & f-
ing bad in these tawdry
takes but then even if

faked by a pic prodigy
she'll never be me Gee!

After reading it multiple times I went on to devour her book The Sonnet According to 'm'
She has written a lot, won many awards and even had one of her works turned into an opera! You can read about her accolades on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordie_Albiston

A life ended too soon. I'm sorry I missed you.

>2 TonjaE: Thank you so much for sharing Albiston. What a poem! So playful with language, and also carries a serious message of rejecting labels and in truth, showing how silly they are. I'm sad she died too young, too.

It's fantastic how one can put a relatively small group of people together to talk poetry, and suddenly we have a hundred amazing poets from the globe, from history, in our group, "yawping." 90% have been new to me. It's a joy.