A Joyous First Year for Poets House in Battery Park City

By Lee Briccetti

Our first year in our new home in Battery Park City was a bustling, joyous debut, and it has given Poets House the momentum to plan for a future as one of the great places for poetry on the globe. As we build on the successes of our inaugural year, school tours bring thousands of children to the Constance Laibe Hays Children’s Room on free class trips; attendance in our Reading Room has tripled; and wide-ranging programs gather a multiplicity of poetries and audiences together.

Poetry’s vitality in this country may, at times, be hard to discern because of the highly diversified, grassroots nature of poetry communities. The proliferation of desktop publishing and the internet have dispersed poetic activity throughout the country like never before. However, by gathering the “many-ness” of poetry in this country into one home, the Poets House library reveals that the publication of poetry journals and books is actually at an all-time high.

We look forward to sharing this artistic abundance this fall and invite you to help us sustain our larger home—twice the space for the library and year-round programming—through your participation and support. Browse through the stacks, attend a writing workshop, help a child write a poem, or work on a manuscript while watching the ferryboats cruise the Hudson River. Free and open to all, Poets House is a place of discovery that helps us find new ways to encounter the art we love.

Lee Briccetti is Executive Director of Poets House