Mrs. Dalloway’s Celebrates Poetry Month With Pocket Poems

For the ninth year in a row, Mrs. Dalloway’s Literary & Garden Arts in Berkeley, California, is sharing “pocket poems” with customers during April’s celebration of National Poetry Month and Poem in Your Pocket Day, April 21, both sponsored by the Academy of American Poets.

Mary McCulloch Fox, the poetry buyer and poetry events coordinator at Mrs. Dalloway’s, manages the production of hundreds of pocket poems each year.

This year, 10 poems by Bay Area writers have been reproduced 300 times each to create 3,000 pocket poems that will be given away to readers, who are encouraged to carry the poems in their pockets to share with family, friends, and others.

Throughout the month of April, poetry books and pocket poems are featured in a window display and on a poetry table in the bookstore. Poetry is a popular buy at Mrs. Dalloway’s at any time of year, said Fox, but April is a particularly successful month due to the store’s extra efforts for the national celebration.

“I think Mrs. Dalloway’s draws poetry buyers because they know they can find unusual presses and some of the small, first-rate independent and university presses here, not only in poetry but in other sections,” said Fox.

Poets whose poems are featured on Mrs. Dalloway’s pocket poems this year are Dana Gioia, Nate Klug, Tracey Knapp, Edgar Kunz, Rosa Lane, Ada Limón, Nina Lindsay, Solmaz Sharif, John Shoptaw, and Noah Warren.

Fox knows she’ll be coordinating pocket poems each April, so throughout the year she keeps an eye on new poetry titles arriving at the store to spot poets from the area who may be interested in contributing. She also handles the formatting of each poem for print, and the printing is professionally done by Minuteman Press in Berkeley, where each poem is folded and collated.

“The poems go out on April 1 and stay out on the floor for the whole month of April,” said Fox, who added that there are about 1,800 pocket poems placed around Mrs. Dalloway’s at the moment.

The poems are distributed beyond the walls of the bookstore as well. “I share the poems at various venues, like the local coffee shop and café next door, and the poems get around all over the Bay Area,” said Fox.

Customers love the pocket poems, she added, and many people will share photos or stories about where the poems end up, such as with a group of backpackers who took poems to read by their campfire, or poems that were taken for favors at a dinner party.

Fox also sends sets of the poems to contributing presses and publishers and the Academy of American Poets, which coordinates National Poetry Month and Poem in Your Pocket Day. “They do get out across the country, which is kind of fun,” said Fox.

Mrs. Dalloway’s is hosting several poetry-related events to coincide with National Poetry Month, including a launch party for poets Rosa Lane and Nina Lindsay with Sixteen Rivers Press, a Bay Area poetry collective that is producing Lane’s Tiller North and Lindsay’s Because.

While Fox enjoys reading all types of books, her interest in poetry took root when the bookstore opened in 2004 and she realized the poetry section needed honing, she said. “Any section reflects the taste of the person who’s curating it. What I like to say is our poetry section represents the really fine independent and university presses, and all the major publishers.”