Founded in 1922 as the Rochester, NY chapter of the Poetry Society of America, Rochester Poets is the area's oldest, ongoing literary organization. The group ceased its affiliation with the Society in the 1980s in order to accept a wider variety of members; at that time, the organization adopted its current name.
Meetings are held monthly on the third Saturday at the Center at High Falls Gallery; from 2003–2005, the organization held monthly readings at Writers & Books; in January 2006, the venue was changed to St. John Fisher College in Pittsford, NY, where it currently holds a reading on the first Wednesday of every month.
Rochester Poets sends out regular email flyers of area literary events, publishes a monthly newsletter and The Pinnacle Hill Review*, an annual anthology of selected member work. The group maintains a website; a mailing list (informing subscribers of area literary events) which can be joined via the website; and a Blog. Since 2004, Rochester Poets has been a sponsor of the annual Poets Against the War event for the Rochester area; since 2006, they have co-sponsored annual World Poetry Day and National Poetry Month events which have been held at St. John Fisher College. From April 2007 until September, 2009, they co-sponsored a montly series of readings at the Anti-War Storefront, of the Peace, Action & Education Committee of Rochester MetroJustice.
Since 2007, Rochester Poets has also sponsored an Emerging Poets event in December of each year at St. John Fisher College. The event is open to poets of all ages; the primary criterion for eligibility is that participants are not yet "established" with a published volume of poems or had a significant number of poems appear in literary journals. The group also hosts the Free Speech Zone series held on the 1st, 2nd, 4th and (if there is one) 5th Tuesday at the Tango Cafe in Rochester.
Past and current members of note include Al Poulin, Jr. (1938–1996), Patricia Janus (1932–2006), Dale Davis, Leah Zazulyer Watson, Cornelius Eady, Dane Gordon, Jordan Smith, James Lavilla-Havelin, Etta Ruth Weigl, Israel Emiot (1909–1978), Gary Lehmann, John Roche, Vincent Golphin, Anne Coon, Carol Oliver, Gerald Clarke, Robert Koch, Wynne McClure, Ruth Kennedy, Francesca Gulì (ca 1921-2009), Paul Humphrey (1915–2001), Eleanor McQuilken (1908–2004), George Monagan (1925–2005), David Michael Nixon, W.E. Butts, Linda Allardt, Patricia Roth Schwartz, John Cieslinski, Beatrice O'Brien, Judith Kitchen, Stanley Rubin, and Frank Judge, the current president.
Other Rochester area poets of note are Adelaide Crapsey (1878–1914), William Heyen, Anthony Piccione (1939–2001), W.E. Butts, and John Ashbery. E. E. Cummings, though not a Rochesterian, has a connection to the city through Dr. James Sibley Watson, a wealthy Harvard classmate who became a patron of the arts and served as a benefactor to Cummings throughout much of the poet's life.
A large portion of the Rochester Poetry Society and Rochester Poets correspondence, minutes and other documents from 1922 to 1973 are archived in the Rare Books and Special Collection Department of the University of Rochester Rush Rhees Library.