Digital Initiatives
So much is uncertain in this moment, but please know that even in these very strange times, we have been thinking of our community. Gathering in our library and for programs has been a way of connecting with each other. But now, we have closed the library and postponed programs as a way of caring for and protecting each other. We are thinking through alternative ways of being with you in solidarity—and are now launching a number of new digital initiatives to bring Poets House to you, wherever you may be! Stay up to date, click here to sign up for our weekly e-blast. Here are a few things you should check out:
Join us for Open House, a weekly radio show on WBAI Co-hosted by poets Cornelius Eady and Patricia Spears Jones. Each episode invites poets, publishers, or poetry advocates to join us for readings and conversations on topics ranging from personal creative practice to the state of poetry today. Open House explores the breadth of the contemporary poetry world.
In August 2021, Poets House at 10 River Terrace suffered a major flood. While we rebuild, check out the on-going Hard Hat Reading Series, featuring poets reading from the Poets House collection. Posted on IGTV, YouTube, and our website.
Poets House Presents is a series of 10 minute readings by poets that are posted on our Instagram, website, and YouTube.
Check out our online live stream program archive.
The Poetry Path in Battery Park City—an immersive public art installation of poetry running from Rockefeller Park’s north end to the marina at Brookfield Place. This installation includes fragments from poems reaching across time, space, and cultures, featuring 50 poets whose work considers the relationships between people, nature, and the urban landscape. Originally scheduled for April, the installation of the Poetry Path is now complete and can be enjoyed by passersby.
Language Is a Temptation: Daily readings from Bernadette Mayer’s Memory.
In July 1971, Bernadette Mayer embarked on a month long experiment: every day she exposed a roll of 35mm film and kept a journal. In July 2020, Poets House embarks on a month long daily experiment: a passage from the corresponding day in 1971 will be read by poets, writers, critics, and artists, as a parallel durational work that celebrates the new publication of Bernadette Mayer’s Memory (Siglio, 2020), that brings together the full sequence of Mayer’s images and text for the first time in book form.
Poets House’s annual children’s anthology is one of the most anticipated events in our calendar. Students from seven classes at local public schools PS 1, PS 89, and PS 276 spend February and March writing poems and creating art in response to a chosen theme. This year, our theme was “paths.”
Poem in Your Pocket Day is a national initiative inviting everyone to share the joy of poetry by putting a poem in your pocket to read throughout the day. This year, Poets House shares selected poems from an anthology of local students’ work, On Our Way: Poems of Paths. We also share selected poems from the planned Poetry Path in Battery Park City, which was to have opened this month. For Poem in Your Pocket Day, choose a poem to print and cut along the lines to carry in your pocket. You’ll carry poetry with you all day.
Over the last ten years, Poets House has worked with Ugly Duckling Presse and Small Fires Press to produce limited-edition broadsides for special events and occasions. Here is a selection from our archives.
Join Tiny Poets Superstar Charles Waters as he performs poems on Virtual Tiny Poets Time. Perfect for toddlers and other youngsters. Bring your poet ears and dancing shoes. Daily at 9am.
Check out the 10*10*10 Community Anthology of poems collected from participants in Dave Johnson’s 10*10*10 Video Workshops!
Fact-Simile Editions published graphically stunning Poetry Trading Cards monthly from 2010-2014. In this online exhibition we’ve paired Fact-Simile trading cards with recordings from our archives.
We are digitizing rare chapbooks from our collection, check out Chapbooks of the Mimeo Revolution to learn more!
We all know the balm of poetry in a crisis, and the need for something to balance the “News”. We’ve been thinking of poems, distractions and necessary self care that resonate with everyone in this isolating emergency. Poets House is posting a multitude of poetic options to counterbalance this dark time. We’ve been posting poems on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram that have helped in tough times.