Board of Directors

Poets House Board of Directors

Robert Kissane, Chairman
Martín Gómez, President
Monica Youn, Vice President
Alan Klein, Treasurer
Margo Viscusi, President Emerita

Cheri Fein
David Grubin
Elizabeth Kandall
Katharine (Wendy) Larsen
Nicholas F. Potter
Nicole Sealey
Myra Shapiro
E. Ward Smith
Tracy K. Smith
Jamie Stern
Maurice B. Wheeler

Poets House deeply regrets the loss of our longtime board member Michael T. Sillerman.

Poets Advisory Committee

The board and staff salute our Poets Advisory Committee.

During the early 1980s, a “think-tank” convened by Elizabeth Kray and Stanley Kunitz, which included a great number of poets from across the aesthetic terrain, discussed poets’ needs in this country. Their conversations led to an articulation of the future organization’s most basic goals—the nurture of poets, the creation of dialogue and community, and greater access to and visibility for the art.

Legal documents for the founding of Poets House were approved in 1985 and public programming began in 1986. Elizabeth Kray formally established a remarkably diverse group of poets during those early days of the organization. They suggested programs and advised on the building of a library. Their germinal energies and care, and the combined efforts of so many friends and poet practitioners over the years, has helped the Poets House library to become one of the most inclusive poetry collections anywhere, with programs reflecting the entire breadth of the art. We praise this original Poets Advisory Committee, and mourn the loss of those of our dear friends who can only be with us in spirit.

Phillip Appleman
Amy Bartlett
Jayne Cortez
Jonathan Galassi
Barbara Guest
Daniel Halpern
Michael Harper
Lawrence Joseph
Galway Kinnell
Denise Levertov
Jackson MacLow
Julio Marzan
William Matthews
Sharon Olds
Robert Phillips
Grace Schulman
Armand Schwerner
David Shapiro
Louis Simpson
William Jay Smith
Gerald Stern
Terese Svoboda
Quincy Troupe
Derek Walcott
C.K. Williams

Later additions included: Henri Cole, Jane Cooper & Michael Heller