To give it its full title, this is Poetry 180, a poem a day for American high schools – set up through the Library of Congress to ‘encourage the appreciation and enjoyment of poetry in America’s High Schools’.

... Poetry 180 focuses on contemporary poetry and provides a valuable resource for high schools everywhere, not just in the US, to make space for poetry in their daily routine. 

• The site, housed by the Library of Congress, was set up by former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins in 2002 and the poems are chosen by him.
• The 180 poems provide one poem a day for the school year.
• The name was also chosen to represent a 180 degree turn – a turning back to poetry.
• The site is very user-friendly.   Poems can be easily accessed and printed out.  There is a useful introduction to the site from Billy Collins with ideas about how and when to present the poems each day.
• There is no particular order in which the poems should be read – schools can choose their own.
• The poems have been selected with the notion of being accesible upon first hearing in mind.
• There is a guestbook for participating schools.

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