Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 10,000 daily visitors and over 9,000 archived posts.
Vox Populi: The Most Popular posts of 2025
Since mainland China blocks virtually all western media, I was surprised a few months ago (following the appearance in New World Poetry of seven of my poems translated into Mandarin by Professor Ma Yongbo) when a flood of visitors from China began clicking onto my poems and essays in Vox Populi. Thankfully, interest spread to better poets such as Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Donna Hilbert and Ma Yongbo himself, as well as many others. Here’s a chart showing the growth in Vox Populi’s readership in 2025:
Monthly visits averaged around 25,000 until September when they grew to 42,000; then October 52,000; November 201,000; and December 256,000.
Notice that most of the traffic in 2025 originated in China:
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Of the top ten cities, eight of them are located in China:
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Vox Populi publishes approximately 740 new posts each year. Here are the ten most popular that were published in 2025; notice all ten are poems:
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: In Response to a Student Asking Where to Find Poetry During Difficult Times
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Letter to the Others in the Dark
Ma Yongbo: Three poems translated from Chinese
Alison Luterman: What I Learned
Barbara Hamby: Trigger Tries To Explain
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It pleases me that large numbers of visitors from China are reading contemporary American poetry, but let’s don’t forget that approximately half of VP‘s posts are prose, including political articles, personal essays, fiction, humor, satire and critical reviews. Here are the ten most visited prose posts that appeared in the last year:
Michael W. Smith: The Sacrifices Made By The Signers of the Declaration
Mike Schneider: Stirring Up the “Great Folk Scare”
Michael T. Young: The Need to Believe | The Poetry of Lisel Mueller
Octavia E. Butler: Kindness eases change / Love quiets fear
Alfred Corn: Unforeseen Tragic Scenario
James Crews: Beech Trees in Spring
Video: The commencement address that Harvard suppressed for mentioning genocide (with text)
Desne A. Crossley: Something I Came Across
Baron Wormser: What Nurtures Us, What Diminishes Us
Alexis Rhone Fancher: Out of Order
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Congratulations to all the poets and writers who published their work in Vox Populi in 2025!
Also, a big thank you to the devoted readers who support our community by commenting on our posts and sharing them on social media. Although there are far too many participants to list here, their comments are often perfect gems, for example these two comments responding to The Boy and the Mockingbird by Luray Gross:
A wonderment of an avian/human bonding story. I once knew a crow who would say hello Joe to everyone he/she met; I once knew a starling who imitated neighborhood lawnmower engines from the eves outside my apartment. Thanks for mockingbird praise. Birds can save our selves, and (apparently) our stories. We need to save them. They have trouble saying help us/ help me. (Jim Newsome)
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Luray: I love this story poem. I am prepared for it first by the encounters I’ve had often from afar with the mockingbirds all over our ranch—sometimes off in the distance trying on every tune they can imagine. Have you ever passed off in whistling, a melody or call to one in full raucous and had her use it in her banter? And then Jarrell’s “The Mockingbird in “The Lost World,” where he says: A mockingbird can sound like anything/ He imitates the world he drove away/ so well that for a moment, in the moonlight/ Which one’s the mockingbird, which one’s the world? (Sean Sexton)
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On a more somber note, this year witnessed the passing of Baron Wormser, one of our most prolific contributors. His popular column brought clarity to the issues of our desperate era, often drawing lessons from American film and literature. We will miss Baron’s decency and intelligence.
And finally, I want to acknowledge Naomi Shihab Nye. Since the founding of VP in 2014, Naomi has inspired our community through her brilliant work as a poet and contributing editor.
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Copyright 2025 Michael Simms
Michael Simms is the founder and editor of Vox Populi.
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Oh wonderful to go back and read again all these poems and essays, thank you, Michael, for compiling them here. Thank you EVERY DAY for your tireless, generous gift to the world, bringing art and education and inspiration and motivation … I am so so grateful for Vox Populi and I am delighted and grateful to be included with other writers I respect and enjoy and honor. Thank you, thank you!
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I am grateful beyond measure to be counted on this list among writers I love. Thank you Michael, for all you do!
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Here’s to you, dear Michael, for so tirelessly and with such deep engagement, offering us poetry, prose, non-fiction & videos, e-v-e-r-y s-i-n-g-l-e day! What a labor of love — what hours of research, reading submissions, editing, sending emails, etc., etc.! Thank you for creating a community of writers & readers that feels like a family to me, thank you for your editorial choices that I am mighty proud & grateful to be part of –and thank you too for your own fine, fine poems. Here’s to you indeed! And here’s to us all, readers & contributors to VP — a superb bunch of humans I love to turn to each morning.
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To echo what has been said, I too am grateful for Vox Populi, I look forward to reading the poems and prose pieces in my inbox ❤ Blessings for an auspicious year ahead.
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I am so grateful for Vox Populi. It whispers or hollers to me each morning that there still is reason to get out of bed. The birds outside my window provide the chorus.
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What a service to poetry and to the essential conversations of our time. My life would be much impoverished if I didn’t wake up each morning to Vox Populi. Thank you, Mike.
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Thank you, Mike, for the house of Vox Populi you have built. And for those who enter it, either to read and listen, or who sing their poems and essays from the communal shower.
Meister Eckhart, a mystic, once wrote: if you want to find the kernel, you must break the shell. Vox Populi breaks the shell.
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Warmest thanks and Happy New Year to you Michael including Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Ma Yongbo, Donna Hilbert, Alison Luterman, Barbara Hamby, Kurt Brown, David Kirby and Betsy Sholl for creating poetic inspiration worldwide, I am looking forward to reading more amazing poetry from all of you in 2026 !
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Congratulations all around! Here’s to a 2026 rich in poetry and bright ideas.
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Thanks for all you do with Ragged Sky, Ellen. I am so indebted to you!
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Hearing this news, I was truly delighted and surprised to see so many visits from my country. I was especially pleased that their focus was primarily on poetry, which is exactly what I wanted to see. Thank you, Michael, for creating this thriving space! Happy New Year, friends!
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Thank you for all you do, Yongbo!
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Wonderful to hear (and interesting, too, about China)! Thanks for all your work, Michael. And wishing you and Vox Populi great health and great writing in 2026!
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Thanks, Adam. Happy New Year!
M
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How wonderful, Michael, that Vox Populi poems and essays are traveling far and wide, including all around China. Go, Vox Populi, Go! Go, truth, compassion, and hope!
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I edit my last sentence above to:
Go, truth, beauty, compassion, and hope!
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Thanks, Christine!
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