Poets House

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Poets House is a New York City literary center and poetry archive.

Filled with 45,000 volumes of poetry, the library is free and open to the public. It has a bright, airy interior, nooks with arm chairs, and a children's reading room filled with paper cranes and poetry books for young readers.

It was founded in 1985 by the late poet Stanley Kunitz, poet laureate of the United States, and arts administrator Elizabeth Kray. It was modeled after The Poetry Library at the South Bank Center in London. Edinburgh and Paris, which also have poetry centers, were inspirations, too. When Kray died in 1987, her library of books and tapes was donated to Poets House, creating the beginning of a rare book collection that contains first-editions and correspondence of luminaries like T. S. Eliot and Robert Frost.

The collection at Poets House contains virtually all poetry books published in the U.S. since 1990, plus many that are long out of print dating to the early 20th Century. It also contains literary journals and chapbooks (small, self-published books of poetry), and many audiotapes and videotapes of poetry readings from the mid-twentieth century through today. Visitors to Poets House can hear the voices of Walt Whitman, E. E. Cummings, William Carlos Williams, Sylvia Plath and hundreds of other poets.

In 1996, the magazine Poetry Flash called Poets House "The House That Holds A Country," a reference to its dedication to being a caretaker of the nation's poetic heritage.

In 2005, it was among 406 New York City arts and social service institutions to receive part of a $20 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation, which was made possible through a donation by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. [1] [2]

Every year, Poet's House hosts a Poetry Showcase, which gathers and displays every book of poetry published in the United States in the preceding twelve months. A monthly reading series also works to connect the public to live poetry.