Robert Barker/University Photography

M.F.A. student poets Stevie Edwards, Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez, Matthew Ritger, Alex Chertok and Emma Catherine Perry.

M.F.A. student poets are using Twitter to promote their work on Poetry in Your Pocket.

As part of the annual Cornell outreach project celebrating National Poetry Month, the poets included their Twitter handles in the mobile and online versions of a chapbook they produced for distribution in New York City at a public poetry event and to students at Food and Finance High School.

The poets' tweets (with the hashtag #PIYP), as well as posters and cards printed with QR codes, will direct readers to the chapbook's contents on a companion website designed to be read on mobile devices.

The Twitter handles will allow "readers [to] contact the poets directly, hopefully enabling a deeper understanding of the work or potentially creating poetry mentor/mentee relationships between our students and others," said Brian Beaudry, who is coordinating the project's social media for the College of Arts and Sciences. The Twitter conversations also allow others who see them to comment on the poems, Beaudry said.

The 10th annual Poem in Your Pocket Day, with live readings geared to students in grades K-12, will be held April 26 in Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan, sponsored by the New York City Mayor's Office of Cultural Affairs and the Bryant Park Corp.

Cornell has participated in the event since 2007, with poetry students in the Department of English's Creative Writing Program reading from their work; they produced an original chapbook for the event starting in 2008. The website was launched in April 2011.

The 2012 edition of "Poetry in Your Pocket" features verse by the eight M.F.A. student poets in Joanie Mackowski's graduate seminar in poetry -- Alex Chertok '12, Stevie Edwards '13, Nicholas Friedman '12, Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez '13, Sally Mao '12, Emma Catherine Perry '13, Matthew Ritger '13 and Kimberly Williams '12.

 

"Vivid images, an ear to music (assonance, rhythm and rhyme), tight language, a clear emotional register and layered meanings are just some of the reasons why we keep coming back to poetry," Gutmann-Gonzalez wrote in her introduction to the book. "A poem's power is cumulative."

The students submitted "one or two poems or more, and then Joanie had to pick which ones were most appropriate, because they're going to high school and grade school students," Gutmann-Gonzalez said.

Several of the poems have been published in literary magazines; others are appearing for the first time.

"I think the work submitted is very strong," Gutmann-Gonzalez said. "There's some nature poems, some relationship poems. Some of them are very formal and some are sonically charged. There's a lot of variety in terms of content and form."

Most of the 2,400 chapbooks will be given away in New York City, but 275 copies will be distributed on campus through project collaborators including the Arts and Sciences Dean's Office and University Communications.

Chertok, Friedman, Mao and Williams will read from their work at the 2012 M.F.A. Graduation Reading, May 12 at 3 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. Edwards will be featured at a "Meet the Author" event for the publication of her book "Good Grief," April 30 at 4 p.m. at The Cornell Store.