Poets have a unique way of looking at and writing about the world around them. They can make us see things that we otherwise may not see. They can make us understand things that are abstract or difficult. They give words, form, and shape to feelings we all share.

Throughout National Poetry Month and beyond, we’ll be bringing you into the mind of the poet. We’ll be asking about the creative process, where inspiration comes from, and what it means to be a poet in 2018.

This month we’re publishing three brilliant collections of poetry from three poets who are up to the task. Welcome to The Anansi Poetry Project.

Emma Healey’s first book of poems, Begin with the End in Mind, was published by ARP Books in 2012. Her poems and essays have been featured in places like the Los Angeles Review of Books, the FADER, the Hairpin, Real Life, the National Post, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Walrus, Toronto Life, and Canadian Art. She was poetry critic at the Globe and Mail (2014–2016) and is a regular contributor to the music blog Said the Gramophone. She was the recipient of the Irving Layton Award for Creative Writing in both 2010 and 2013, a National Magazine Award nominee in 2015, and a finalist for the K.M. Hunter award in 2016.

A. F. Moritz has written nineteen books of poetry. His work has received the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Award in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Poetry magazine’s Bess Hokin Prize, the Ingram Merrill Fellowship, the ReLit Award, the Raymond Souster Award, and three shortlistings for the Governor General’s Literary Award. His Griffin Poetry Prize–winning collection The Sentinel was a Globe and Mail Top 100 of the Year, and his ReLit Award–winning Night Street Repairs was named one of forty-three “books of the decade” by the Globe and Mail in 2010.

“Understanding that nothing could be done

I went, and saw another sparrow fly down

and the two bob a while as sparrows do

in the high unmown grass…”

Mikko Harvey was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His poems have been published in DIAGRAM, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, and Maisonneuve. He attended Vassar College and the Ohio State University, and he currently serves as a digital poetry editor for Fairy Tale Review. He currently lives in Berkeley, California.

“She peeled off her gloves, hit the lights,

uncapped the vial containing my blood, and took a sip.”

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Anansi publishes very good poetry. Check out all of our collections.