A month for verse: it is a neat idea,
but whose idea it was, the CBC
seems not to be quite sure. This morning on
my radio, as Michael Enright set
the stage before an interview with Don
Domanski, he informed us that this month
was many things to people in the States—
it's "Pets are Wonderful" and "Soyfoods" month
to them—but here, he said, we celebrate
our poets (which "may say something" about
this Great White North and its priorities).

"But wait!" thought I, "I'm sure I've heard a word
or two about this month of poetry
from bloggers in our neighbour to the south—
the Ridger, for example, and isolt
have posted poems recently, and made
explicit mention of this April fest.
And sure enough, a little searching showed
that in the States as well as Canada
the month of April has been set aside
for poetry (not necessarily
to the exclusion of the pets and soy
and other things, but still). In fact, it seems
the A.A.P., in 1996,
proclaimed it first, and that the L.C.P.
took up the cause in 1999.

The point of this is not to point and laugh
at Michael Enright or his fact-checkers,
but just to note that once again, these two
close neighbour countries' calendars are joined
in common rhythm, and, of course, that rhymes,
though bound in lines, bound over boundary lines.

In the United States, April is National Pets Are Wonderful Month. It is also Stress Awareness Month and National Soyfoods Month. It may say something or other about Canadians that in April, we celebrate National Poetry Month.

—Michael Enright, The Sunday Edition