National Poetry Month, which is celebrated each April, will celebrate its 20th anniversary. Started by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, the event is now “the largest literary celebration in the world with schools, publishers, libraries, booksellers and poets celebrating poetry’s vital place in our culture,” according to the academy’s website.

A variety of celebratory events are being planned locally, including a special visit by former Maine Poet Laureate Betsy Sholl to the Scarborough Public Library on April 10, a Poem in Your Pocket week at Pond Cove Elementary School in Cape Elizabeth and an innovative “Lines for Fines” program at the South Portland Public Library, which allows patrons to submit an original poem they’ve written in lieu of payment for any library fees they may owe.

Sholl has published seven collections of poetry, including “Rough Cradle” in 2009. She’s also won a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts and has been a visiting poet at the University of Pittsburgh and Bucknell University.

She held the post of Poet Laureate in Maine from 2006 to 2011 and said “the point (of poetry) is to linger in the music of the words,” adding “William Carlos Williams says the purpose of poetry is to get the inside out, which I think means to give voice to the inner life, what has often been called the soul.”

Sholl said she writes poetry for various reasons, but one of the most compelling is the simple pleasure “of making something with language, not unlike making something in paint or clay or wood.”

She also loves poetry because of the way it can “open up new ways of seeing or hearing. You put two words together that don’t normally go with each other and something new occurs.”

In addition, Sholl believes that “poems can be a way to get at the richness of experience and to move beyond easy assumptions or self-delusion. So, for me, it’s joy and self-scrutiny and a desire to discover.”

Poetry is often seen as an art form that’s difficult to understand or follow, but Sholl said that’s not true. Poetry “just uses the words of our familiar language in a new way,” she said.

In terms of her visit to the Scarborough Public Library, Sholl said her goal is for attendees to “enjoy the experience of hearing poetry the (same) way they enjoy listening to music or watching dance or a movie. Rather than feeling poetry is hard to decipher, I’d like people to just enjoy the experience – the music of words being made into different shapes.”

For her own pleasure, Sholl enjoys reading the works of “the great Russian and eastern European poets who came out of the two world wars and found ways to respond to those difficult times.” She also enjoys contemporary American poets like Brigit Kelly and Terrance Hayes.

Sholl said it’s important to have an annual celebration of poetry to “allow us to slow down and interact with language – to brood, meditate and consider deeper things.”

At Pond Cove school, Heather Reeves, co-president of the parent’s association, said the Poem in Your Pocket event is designed as “a fun way to introduce our kids to poetry.”

Reeves said the overall goal of the week is for students to “find out, firsthand, that poetry doesn’t need to be stuffy or serious or even rhyming.”

She added, “Poetry is a wonderful way to express feelings, funny, silly, beautiful or ridiculous. Poetry can be whatever you make of it, whatever makes you happy.”

This is the fourth year the parent’s association at the school will be handing out poems for kids to carry around and read to each other and Reeves said, “our goal is simply to make poetry more accessible to the students” and to show “it’s not some esoteric and lofty medium. It’s immediately available to everyone.”

A closer look

Acclaimed Maine poet Betsy Sholl will host an afternoon of poetry and conversation on at 2 p.m. on Sunday, April 10, at the Scarborough Public Library. The event is free and open to the public. Call 883-4723 or see www.scarboroughlibrary.org for more information.

Maine poet Betsy Sholl will read and discuss poetry at a special event at the Scarborough Public Library on April 10.

Poem in Your Pocket Week will be held April 4-8 at Pond Cove Elementary in Cape Elizabeth.