New Data From National Endowment for the Arts Shows Poetry Reading is Up

From a Blog Post by Sunil Iyengar, Director of Research and Analysis, National Endowment for the Arts:

Nearly 12 percent (11.7 percent) of adults read poetry in the last year, according to new data from the National Endowment for the Arts’ 2017 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA). That’s 28 million adults. As a share of the total U.S. adult population, this poetry readership is the highest on record over a 15-year period of conducting the SPPA, a research partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau.
The 2017 poetry-reading rate is five percentage points up from the 2012 survey period (when the rate was 6.7 percent) and three points up from the 2008 survey period (when the rate was 8.3 percent). This boost puts the total rate on par with 2002 levels, with 12.1 percent of adults estimated to have read poetry that year.

Learn More, Read the Complete Blog Post
Direct to NEA Poetry Data File (.xlsx)
See Also: NPD Group Reports on the “Rekindling U.S. Poetry Book Sales”

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