Poetry Project

Poetry Project
Name	Poetry Project
Formation	1966
Type	Literary organization
Headquarters	New York City
Location	St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, Manhattan
Leader title	Director

Poetry Project is an arts organization and reading series founded in 1966 at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery in New York City that has hosted experimental, avant-garde, and contemporary poets, fostering connections among figures from the Beat Generation, Black Arts Movement, Language poetry, and later movements. It has served as a venue, workshop, archive, and publisher associated with influential voices drawn from institutions and communities such as Columbia University, New York University, The New School, Barnard College, Hospitality Coalition (New York City), and neighborhood organizations in East Village, Manhattan and Greenwich Village, Manhattan.

History

The organization began amid the cultural ferment of the 1960s alongside events like Summer of Love, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War protests, and gatherings at places such as Caffè Trieste and The Gaslight Cafe. Early administrators and readers included figures who intersected with the Beat Generation networks around Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, City Lights Bookstore, and editors from The Paris Review and The Village Voice. In the 1970s and 1980s the Project engaged with communities emerging from the Black Arts Movement, intersections with poets associated with Nuyorican Poets Cafe and organizations linked to Amiri Baraka and Haki R. Madhubuti. Leadership transitions connected the Project to archives and collections at institutions like the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress and collaborations with festivals including the Knitting Factory series and Greenwich Village Halloween Parade adjacent cultural programming.

Mission and Goals

The stated aims emphasize sustaining reading series and workshops that support writers influenced by predecessors such as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, T. S. Eliot, and practitioners from the New York School. Goals include preserving oral history of poets connected to John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Lorine Niedecker, and Elizabeth Bishop while encouraging experimental practices related to Charles Olson and Robert Creeley. The Project positions itself among institutions like Poets House, Academy of American Poets, Poetry Foundation, and community venues such as ABC No Rio in advocating for accessibility, archival preservation, and public programming.

Programs and Activities

Regular activities include weekly readings, workshops, archives, and events parallel to festivals like St. Mark's Poetry Project Benefit and collaborations with venues such as St. Mark's Bookshop, ABC No Rio, The Kitchen (arts center), and Museum of Modern Art. Educational programs have partnered with universities including Hunter College, CUNY Graduate Center, Pratt Institute, and outreach to community centers like Henry Street Settlement. Residencies and fellowships have been offered in context with grants from bodies like National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and foundations associated with Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Special projects have included multi-genre events connecting poets with musicians from John Cage circles, visual artists associated with Andy Warhol and curators from Whitney Museum of American Art.

Notable Participants and Alumni

Readers, teachers, and alumni have included major and emerging figures tied to movements and institutions: Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, Bernadette Mayer, Alice Notley, Ron Silliman, Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe, Martha Ronk, Frank O'Hara (historical influence), Ted Berrigan, Ed Sanders, Amiri Baraka, Carolyn Forché, Holly Hughes, John Ashbery, Lyn Hejinian, Eileen Myles, Paul Violi, Rae Armantrout, Peter Gizzi, Michael Palmer, C. D. Wright, Ishmael Reed, Derek Walcott, Mary Ruefle, Sonia Sanchez, Tracy K. Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Terrance Hayes, Diane di Prima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Koch, David Shapiro, Jorie Graham, Mark Strand, Nick Flynn, Ada Limón, Jerome Rothenberg, Michael McClure, Lawrence Joseph, Bhanu Kapil, LeRoi Jones, Claribel Alegría, Junot Díaz, Claudia Rankine, Sudeep Sen, Ocean Vuong, Saul Williams, Kara Walker (cross-disciplinary collaborator), Amelia Rosselli, Charles Wright, Camille Rankine, John Wieners, Anselm Berrigan, Amiri Baraka (again as historical participant).

Publications and Recordings

The Project has produced chapbooks, anthologies, and cassette and CD recordings comparable to small presses and labels such as City Lights Publishers, New Directions Publishing, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Poets & Writers, and periodicals like Fence and Conjunctions. Notable series include archival audio recorded alongside engineers and producers who worked with Nonesuch Records, Columbia Records archives or independent labels similar to Atavistic Records and Jagjaguwar. Publications have featured collaborations with editors from Zukofsky Estate, Black Sparrow Press, New York Review Books, and university presses including University of California Press and Yale University Press.

Funding and Organization

Funding sources and institutional partners have mirrored support patterns involving National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, private donors linked to The Carnegie Corporation of New York, and occasional municipal cultural grants from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Organizational governance has included boards with members drawn from academia at Columbia University, New York University, City College of New York, directors connected to curators at Whitney Museum of American Art and administrators with ties to Poets House and Language poets collectives.

Impact and Reception

Critics, historians, and cultural commentators in outlets such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Village Voice, and journals like Boston Review and Harper's Magazine have chronicled the Project's role in shaping trajectories of poets associated with Language poetry, the New York School, and late 20th-century experimental writing. Academic studies at programs like Rutgers University, SUNY Buffalo, and Brown University have examined its archives alongside collections at New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and cited its influence on public readings, pedagogy, and small-press ecosystems exemplified by collaborations with Tupelo Press and Wave Books. The Project's reputation endures in discussions at symposiums such as those at Princeton University and conferences organized by Modern Language Association.

Category:Poetry organizations