The Poetry Project

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We also accept donations by check to: The Poetry Project, 131 E 10th St, New York, NY 10003

The Poetry Project’s Members and Donors help to sustain a thriving cultural anti-enterprise—a counter-hierarchical, radical space and community which advances more open access to literature, education, and opportunities for sharing one’s creative work.

Culture ripples out from The Poetry Project in a singular and meaningful way—our economy of freely given, materially supported poetry continues to profoundly shape broader artistic risk-taking, innovation, and collectivity.

We believe poetry is vital to communities and advocate to make our programs and publications available regardless of ability to pay. Our events and workshops are often half the going rate of comparable programs elsewhere—furthermore, we create opportunities for work-exchange admissions and full-tuition scholarships.

We also believe that the time and work poets dedicate to poetry has value, and we recognize this through payment and honoraria consistent with what artists and performers receive in other disciplines.

We are not a theater. We are not an academy. We are not a museum, or a gallery, or a publication, and we have none of the burnished mechanisms of support that sustain these neatly categorized models of cultural work. We are an organization which has been run entirely by working poets for more than 50 years, which means we are well practiced in precarity and the magic of finding what’s astonishing and possible within the limited means available.

Much of what we do stubbornly rejects prevailing cultural logic and legibility—something unfortunately unsavory to most conventional philanthropy. And so we must turn to other models—unconventional, ever-germinal models to sustain the iconoclasts and experimenters whose vital, radical, dangerous, and vulnerable work cannot continue without your support.

When you donate to The Poetry Project, you join a vast and dedicated community of dreamers committed to the particular and unruly spirit of what we do—a community of supporters who have helped to define avant-garde literature and performance of the past half-century. And you directly contribute to the poets, students, readers, and listeners envisioning this bolder future.

If you have connected in some way with The Project’s work, we hope you might consider a contribution to this community. If you are able to prioritize support, we hope that you will. We know that The Project’s work radiates significantly and importantly outward, and we have faith in this community’s commitment to mutuality, risk, and care.

The Poetry Project is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.

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