Uncover more pathways to poetry

Essential poetry organizations

92Y Unterberg Poetry Center
Famed cultural center 92Y’s poetry arm hosts year-round events and performances in New York City, as well as providing educational opportunities for local students and free online access to its rich archive of recordings.

Academy of American Poets
The Academy of American Poets publishes poetry digitally through its iconic Poem-a-Day series and its print magazine, American Poets, and sponsors readings, events, and some of the U.S.’s major poetry awards.

Poet in The City
Poet in The City is a London-based, volunteer-driven organization that partners with different groups and venues from across the artistic spectrum to create cross-genre original programming with the mission of bringing poetry to new audiences.

Poetry Foundation
One of the largest literary nonprofits in the world, The Poetry Foundation publishes cornerstone poetry journal Poetry, sponsors awards and outreach programs like Poetry Out Loud, and is home to a 30,000-volume library and event space in Chicago.

Poetry Ireland
Ireland’s premier poetry organization and publisher of Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Ireland hosts literary events and workshops as well as providing free resources for writing, teaching, and learning about poetry.

The Poetry Society
London’s Poetry Society is a membership organization founded in 1909 that currently promotes poetry via annual competitions and event series, the publication of Poetry Review, and support for children’s education.

Poetry Society of America
The oldest poetry organization in the U.S. is best known for the many poetry awards it bestows and for establishing Poetry in Motion, a national project that makes literature accessible through placing poems in public transit.

Split This Rock
D.C.-based Split This Rock brings together poets, artists, and activists to create programming in which the arts cross over into public life with a social justice focus, including readings, workshops, youth events, and an annual festival.

Poetry libraries

National Poetry Library
The UK’s National Poetry Library is home to the largest public poetry collection in the world, comprising books from 1912 to the present as well as audio recordings and unusual materials like posters and poem cards.

The Poetry Collection at University at Buffalo
Part of the Special Collections at University at Buffalo Libraries, the Poetry Collection boasts vast holdings of poetry first editions, more than 100 archival poetry collections, and specialty areas like little literary magazines.

Poets House
New York City’s Poets House holds the largest poetry collection in open stacks in the U.S., supplemented by digital materials and projects as well as offerings that include readings, classes, exhibitions, and educational programs.

The Raymond Danowski Poetry Library
The 75,000 volumes of poetry and 50,000 poetry journals housed at Emory University’s Raymond Danowski Poetry Library include mimeographed materials, rare books and association copies, and items handmade by poets.

Scottish Poetry Library
This membership library hosts readings, workshops, and exhibitions, and its Scottish-focused collection of over 30,000 volumes covers poetry written in Scottish Gaelic and Lowland Scots as well as in English.

The University of Arizona Poetry Center
In addition to an impressive collection of print poetry books, the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona also features archives, rare books, and an online Audio Video Library, voca, that hosts hundreds of readings from the Poetry Center’s long-running onsite reading series.

Online poetry resources

Favorite Poem Project
The Favorite Poem Project was begun by former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky as a way to document individual Americans’ personal relationships with poetry. Its website is home to videos of many of these poems, read by the people who chose them.

Library of Congress: Poetry and Literature
The national library of the United States hosts many historically significant poetry recordings in its digital poetry archives, as well as serving as a hub for general American poetry background and for information on U.S. Poets Laureate and their cultural work.

The Listening Booth & Vocarium at Harvard University’s Woodberry Poetry Room
Many 20th-century poetry greats from T.S. Eliot onward were first recorded at Harvard’s Vocarium. The Woodberry Poetry Room expands on this tradition with holdings of online recordings from both past and present poets.

PennSound
A project of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, PennSound offers up the largest collection of poetry audio recordings available online, both freshly produced by the site and its partners and archived from outside poetry readings.

The Poetry Archive
U.K.-based non-profit The Poetry Archive aims to continue the oral tradition of poetry by creating and preserving recordings of poets reading their own work, many of which are available to listen to for free.

Poetry International Archives
Based in the Netherlands, Poetry International features poems written around the world, with the distinctive feature of placing poems in their original languages side by side with their English translations.

Project Gutenberg Poetry Bookshelf
Project Gutenberg has collected public domain works and made them accessible online since the 1970s, and its Poetry Bookshelf serves as a gateway for some of the many poetry texts it has gathered for digital reading and download.

Representative Poetry Online
University of Toronto Libraries’ Representative Poetry Online began as a digital companion to the university’s print anthology series and now exists as an independent database of poems in both English and French, written from the Middle Ages to the present day.

SFSU Poetry Center Digital Archive
Over six decades of poetry recordings are held in San Francisco State University’s Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives, many of which are now available to listen to on its site, with newly digitized materials continuously added.

Poetry worldwide

Poetry Translation Centre

The UK’s Poetry Translation Centre works with poets and translators to bring great contemporary poems from Africa, Asia, and Latin America into the English language, introducing them to new audiences.

Khonsay at City Lore

Featuring lines from poems in 50 minority languages, Khonsay: Poem of Many Tongues is a filmed cento meant to spotlight linguistic diversity and the importance of conserving world languages.

Nabati poetry in the UAE

Learn about Nabati poetry, an important vernacular form of Arabic verse also known as “Bedouin poetry,” whose long history and straightforward language make it accessible to many.

African Poems

African Poems collects recordings of oral-tradition poems from across Africa, showcasing the broader context of music and storytelling that forms the poems’ cultural milieu.

ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival

Each year, the Berlin-based ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival brings together poetry films from dozens of countries around the world for its visitors.

Poesia 21

On World Poetry Day 2021, Poesia 21 brought together livestreams of readings from poets at eight hubs on six continents, all of which can be watched on their site.

Bartleby.com Poetry Anthologies

Bartleby.com gathers public domain works of all types on its site, including a curated selection of poetry anthologies that include English translations from French, Russian, Latin, Italian, and more.