Every year on January 1st—for fifty rowdy, enduring, and improbable years—The Poetry Project and its friends, lovers, and co-conspirators have gathered for the New Year's Day Marathon. What began as a reading of thirty-odd poets has grown into a twelve-hour-long spectacle of 150 performances. The New Year's Day Marathon is The Poetry Project's signature event and our calling card, an untameable celebration of the horizon of language, the act of devotion, and the edge of experiment that is avant-garde poetry and performance. A nycthemeral testament to centering the margin, to the weird as social practice, the New Year's Day Marathon is real lived and living proof that poetry is the revelator, the subterranean taste- and troublemaker of the literary arts and downtown cultural scene, and a true accomplice to social change.
The New Year's Day Marathon is a party/afterparty with a mind of its own. It's an uncanny experience that is both a real event and a mutually agreed upon fever-dream—an enormous feat and group effort that also sort of just happens, that reminds us we are happening too. It's a place where like-minded freaks gather, where we go to see and be seen. It is our annual commitment to the belief that if we can do it together then we should do it together; it's where we go to fall in love with poetry, with each other, with a utopia that isn't here yet, with the utopia that's always been here. The Marathon is the chicest, strangest sustainer, and the only way we know how to begin the new year.
It is also The Poetry Project's biggest fundraiser. The money raised at the New Year's Day Marathon supports: over 65 events each year that reach thousands of attendees around the world; a breadth of creative and scholarly publications; writing fellowships; emerging writer prizes; the hundreds of workshop attendees who join us each season; and the payments we make to the 500+ teachers, performers, readers, editors, technicians, lecturers, writers, curators, scholars, and critics we program each year. The Marathon is crucial to maintaining the working and learning community, the alternative economy of poetry, and the cultural anti-enterprise we have been collectively authoring for more than half a century.
We hope you can join us on January 1st, 2024 for The Poetry Project's 50th Annual New Year's Day Marathon. We are stunned to be celebrating this golden anniversary. We hope you'll be there too.
The Poetry Project's 50th Annual New Year's Day Marathon will begin at 11AM on January 1st and go to about midnight. The event will be divided into two parts: 11AM–5PM and 6PM–midnight, with an hour break in between. During the hour break, the sanctuary will be cleared so that we can reset the space.
Wearing masks is highly encouraged and we will provide them to anyone who requests one at the door.
NOTE: Tickets are no longer available but you can watch the marathon via our livestream.
The Poetry Project's 50th Annual New Year's Day Marathon:
artists listed in order of appearance
Part One (11am–5pm):
11am–noon, hosted by Mel Elberg: Claire Chase; Ama Birch; Joshua Garcia; Ivanna Baranova; Marcella Durand; Bahaar Ahsan; Alan Felsenthal; Jenny Romaine; Collier Schorr; David Kirschenbaum; Marcos de la Fuente
noon–1pm, hosted by Noa Mendoza & Ayaz Muratoglu: Edmund Berrigan; Anna Gurton-Wachter; Betsy Fagin; Don Yorty; Ashna Ali; Aldrin Regina Valdez; Greg Masters; Sarah Schulman; Samuel Breslin; Ernie Brooks, Peter Zummo, Mustafa Ahmed, Pete Galub, & Steve Shelley; Lila Dlaboha; Lauren Bakst & Kris Lee
1–2pm, hosted by Lydia Cortés: Jeannine Otis; Todd Colby; Emily Brandt; Steph Gray; Kameelah Janan Rasheed; Arden Wohl; Foamola; Samuel Espíndola Hernández; IV Castellanos; Dusty Childers & Frank Schablewski; jaamil olawale kosoko; Jaye Bartell
2–3pm, hosted by Mirene Arsanios: Ka Baird & Shelley Hirsch; Caelan Ernest; Bob Rosenthal; Ari Brostoff; devynn emory; Zoë & Maia Chao; Brenda Coultas; Eleni Sikelianos; Lydia Cortés; Gia Gonzales; Judah Rubin; Emily Johnson; Lee Ranaldo
3–4pm, hosted by Viva Ruiz: Deepali Gupta; Matt Longabucco; Dana Ysabel Dela Cruz; Maxe Crandall & Ashkan Behzadi; Journey Streams; Arianne Ayu Alizio; Lee Ann Brown; Kyle Carrero Lopez; Odetta Hartman; Courtney Bush; Dave Morse; Annie-B Parson
4–5pm, hosted by Patricia Spears Jones: Sing in Solidarity; Sky Hopinka; Erica Hunt; Mirene Arsanios; charles theonia; Viva Ruiz; Edwin Torres with Sean Meehan; Muyassar Yousef Kurdi; m.s. RedCherries; Tracey McTague; Sahar Khraibani; Garrett Devoe; Rude Mechanical Orchestra
Part Two (6pm–midnight)
6–7pm hosted by Morgan Bassichis: DAYS (Ethan Philbrick & Ned Riseley); Erin Markey; Ben Fama; Penny Arcade; Elliot Reed; Anselm Berrigan; Douglas Dunn, Jules Bakshi, Paul Singh, & Steven Taylor; Sean Cole; CAConrad; Nile Harris; Emily XYZ & Myers Bartlett; Yoshiko Chuma
7–8pm, hosted by Kyle Dacuyan: Amirtha Kidambi; Fred Moten; Morgan Bassichis; Cecilia Vicuña; Kim Rosenfield; Leah Hennessey; Patricia Spears Jones; Ted Dodson; Malcolm-x Betts; Cecilia Gentili; Cuthwulf Eileen Myles with Ryan Sawyer & Steve Gunn; Pamela Sneed; Kaleem Hawa
8–9pm, hosted by Cecilia Gentili: Karen Finley; Rachel Levitsky; E.R. Pulgar; Jordan Tannahill; Harron Walker; Max Steele; Tyler Ashley; Bobbi Salvör Menuez & quori theodor; Laura Ortman & Katherine Liberovskya; Emily Allan; Chelsea Manning; Anne Waldman
9–10pm, hosted by Tyler Ashley: Wo Chan; Nicole's Revenge; Tess Dworman; Matvei Yankelevich; Benjamin Krusling; Shiv Kotecha; hannah baer; Riven Ratanavanh; Carolyn Ferrucci; Early Shinada; Isa Spector; Ty Mitchell; Victoria Ruiz
10–11pm, hosted by Kay Gabriel: Conrad Tao; Sarah Nicole Prickett; Jo Barchi; Tilghman Alexander Goldsborough; Rainer Diana Hamilton; David Velasco; Sam Max; Tess Brown-Lavoie; Candystore; Lena Pervez Afridi; Elena Comay del Junco; Jasmine Sanders
11pm–midnight, hosted by Will Farris & Cuthwulf Eileen Myles: Jim Behrle; Jonathan Aprea; Mel Elberg; Morgan Vō; Rachel Allen; Matt Proctor; Lix Zackeroff; James Barickman; Noa Mendoza; Ayaz Muratoglu; Kay Gabriel; Will Farris; Anna Cataldo; Roberto Montes; Nicole Wallace; Laura Henriksen; Kyle Dacuyan
The entire event will also be livestreamed. Livestream tickets are donation-based, $5–15 suggested.
Thank you to this year's food, drink, and book donors: Academy Records & CDs, Cafe Mogador, Chili by Don Yorty, Dank Bread Brooklyn, Fence Books, Freddy's Bar, Futurepoem, Graywolf Press, Mama Tried, New Directions, New York Review of Books, Nightboat Books, Roof Books, S'mac, Semiotext(e), Smør Bakery, The Song Cave, Susan Mills Artist Books, Tender Buttons Press, Topos Bookstore, Two Boots Pizza, Ugly Duckling Presse, Veselka, Wave Books, Wesleyan University Press, World Poetry Books