The Poetry Project

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The Poetry Project

The Poetry Project is based at St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery, a vibrant artistic and community space which includes the St.

Through its live programming, workshops, publications, website and special events, The Poetry Project promotes, fosters and inspires the reading and writing of contemporary poetry by presenting contemporary poetry to diverse audiences. Through its live programming, workshops, publications, website and special events, The Poetry Project promotes, fosters and inspires the reading and writing of cont

emporary poetry by (a) presenting contemporary poetry to diverse audiences, (b) increasing public recognition, awareness and appreciation of poetry and other arts, (c) providing a community setting in which poets and artists can exchange ideas and information, and (d) encouraging the participation and development of new poets from a broad range of styles. Since 1966, The Poetry Project has expanded access to literature, education, and opportunities for sharing one's creative work in a counter-hierarchical, radically open space and community. Premised on the vision that cultural action at the local level can inspire broader shifts in public consciousness, The Project is committed to developing and collaborating on replicable program models that challenge persistent social narratives, especially through the verbal reframing made possible in poetry. We do this work through a combination of live readings, performances, lectures, events, and workshops, in addition to literary and critical publications and an emerging writers program. Mark's Church congregation, Danspace Project, and New York Theatre Ballet.

06/05/2025

On June 19th, Queer|Art and The Poetry Project co-present MARSHA!, an intimate evening with artist, filmmaker, author and Multi-Year QAM Mentor Tourmaline in celebration of her newest book. The event will include an author reading of MARSHA: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson, the first definitive biography of the revolutionary activist. Afterwards, Tourmaline will be joined by Egyptt LaBeija for a moderated talkback, and the evening will conclude with live performances by guest stars. A rallying cry for liberation in celebration of Juneteenth, the program convenes artists, audiences, and community members to reflect on Marsha’s enduring impact and the continued work of Black trans artists and movement workers today.

poetryproject.org/events

06/02/2025

Please join us to celebrate the work from The Poetry Project’s Spring 2025 workshop participants! This reading will take place virtually over Zoom on Friday 6/6 at 7pm ET.

poetryproject.org/events

05/28/2025

Please join us for our last and most cherished event of the season: our Volunteer and Intern Potluck Reading where the poets who generously donate their time and labor to make the Poetry Project’s readings possible, get to read. Join us in celebrating them, and feel free to bring a snack to share!

7pm celebration, 8pm reading

05/17/2025

In the last 15 months, we have witnessed innumerable scenes of IOF soldiers enjoying themselves on invaded land, dancing, role playing, laughing, defiling homes and places of worship, rummaging in personal drawers, playing back drone footage of mass detonations, setting up seating areas to watch the bombing of Gaza from the hills of the settlements. What do they enjoy so much and how is it related to all this death? How does barring the enjoyment of the other take the form of purposeful killing, maiming, or lynching? To think the repetitive appearance of these acts and these images, we may need to illuminate theories of enjoyment in psychoanalysis, and why the injunction to enjoy pertains to Law also in psychoanalysis. The manner in which enjoyment serves the (superego) injunction to obey and to enjoy that obedience to the point of transgressive obscenity. If every “wherever there is society, there is law” (Ubi societas ibi ius and Costas Douzinas adds: ubi jus ibi subjectum et societas) includes going over and above the call of law and duty (thanks to the phenomenon of repressive desublimation in socially-constituted Law), then enjoyment of obedience is possibly deranged transgression. The soldiers both succumb to and reproduce the horror that may emerge from Law and its transgression, and are thus both subjects and objects – not merely determined, unfree agents; victims of a military apparatus, or sociopathic aberrations. In the relation to the Other, between determinism and interpretation, one could ask, what ethics, what society, what law is before us? In this DIS/COURSE session we will probe together these thoughts, theories of enjoyment, and of death drive in relation to streamed detonations, desecrations, cheerings, and more by Israeli soldiers in Gaza and Lebanon.

Some readings will be assigned and the session will be a combination of lecture, reading and seminar discussion. Capped at 30.

This Dis/Course Workshop will take place virtually on Saturday, May 31 at noon.

poetryproject.org/learning

05/16/2025

Emily XYZ and Myers Bartlett perform works from the vinyl LP OMSHIVA MICHIGAN — Poems for 2 Voices by Emily XYZ, commissioned by the Poetry Project with funding from the Axe-Houghton Foundation. Please join us in celebrating the release of their new LP!

Friday, May 30, 8pm in the Parish Hall at St Mark's

poetryproject.org/events

This event will also be livestreamed for free on the Project's YouTube channel.

05/12/2025

Please join us on Friday 5/23 in the East Yard at St Mark's Church for F**k Debt: Johanna Hedva & Jordan Lord.

When we say f**k debt, we of course mean f**k interest and the financial practice of profiting from the act of meeting a need, which most American institutions depend on—banks, insurance companies, universities, to name just a few. But we also mean there’s no f**king without debt (another word for need, dependency, risk).

In this outdoor event, the artists and writers Johanna Hedva and Jordan Lord will think together about the entanglements of s*x with money, social life, disability, eating out, friendship, inheritance, the past, prophecy, where and when we live, and how we’ll die. Hedva and Lord will share their work, talk about writing, movies, and work they haven’t made yet, all of which is largely because of debt, in many senses.

Accessibility Information

Outdoor, CART, ASL, amplification, seating, and wheelchair accessible, all gender, bathroom provided. The yard is not ADA accessible and may not work for all wheelchair users.

This reading will take place outdoors in the East Yard at St. Mark's Church around dusk. Seating is provided (but feel free to BYOBlanket if you like). CART, ASL, and open amplification will be provided. The readers will conduct their own Audio Description as integral to the reading. A wheelchair accessible bathroom is located inside St. Mark’s Church.

The wheelchair accessible ramp to the East Yard is on 10th St and 2nd Avenue. The East Yard is primarily densely packed dirt with some patches of grass, marked occasionally by flat stone grave ledgers that protrude an inch or two above ground. The yard itself is not ADA wheelchair accessible but some wheelchair users may choose to use the plywood path over the uneven ground beyond the ramp and sidewalk at their own discretion. Access Doula, Alex Dolores Salerno and Poetry Project volunteers will be available to support in wayfinding and navigation as desired.

Please feel free to email us at [email protected] with any questions or for more information on access to this event.

The event costs $10 but no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

05/09/2025

Whether through an end-of-the-world meditation or the voice of a contemporary art curator touring torture chambers, poupeh missaghi and Joey Yearous-Algazorin’s writings explore voice—not as personal expression or the stylistic imprint of the author, but as a fictional device that reveals how every rhetorical choice, every texture of discourse, is imbued with ideology. Only then can we begin to hear what lies behind language.

Friday, May 16, 8pm in the Parish Hall at St Mark's

This event will also be livestreamed for free on the Project's YouTube channel.

poetryproject.org/events

05/07/2025

Organized by Marcella Durand and Jennifer Firestone

Please join us for this special night of two celebrations: the Coffee House publication of Rachel Blau Duplessis' seminal Drafts and the MIT collection Other Influences: An Untold History of Feminist Avant-garde Poetics. Rachel Blau Duplessis will read from Drafts along with creative responses to Drafts from Erica Hunt and Rachel Levitsky. The night will conclude with a discussion about feminism and activism among the three poets.

Wednesday, May 21, 8pm in the Parish Hall at St Mark's

This event will also be livestreamed for free on the Project's YouTube channel.

poetryproject.org/events

05/05/2025

“Tenants of a vision we rent out endlessly”: first published in a small print run in 1978, Bernadette Mayer’s The Golden Book of Words is once again in print in an edition from New Directions. Mayer’s poems in this early work, adored by her fans and out of print for decades, glisten with lyric brio and expansive, curious observation. We’re thrilled to celebrate the republication of a brilliant book by Mayer (1945–2022), a former Poetry Project Director and one of our all-time stars.

Readers include: Lee Ann Brown, Brenda Coultas, Helen Decker, Marcella Durand, Gia Gonzales, Philip Good, Shiv Kotecha, Sarah Steadman, Morgan Võ, Meagan Washington, and Marie Warsh.

Monday 5/19 in the Parish Hall at St Mark's. 7:30pm reception, 8pm event.

poetryproject.org/events

This event will also be livestreamed for free on YouTube.

04/30/2025

When living under a state of permanent crisis, containment is shattered, the self is made brutally porous to air, ashes, and rents too high to afford. Yet our attachment to destruction runs unforgivingly deep. When Dawn Lundy Martin and Rosie Stockton speak of love, they speak of its blooming contradictions. Between sweet surrender and the blur of desire, their lyricism is one that asks “How many people does it take to make a person?” (Dawn Lundy Martin)

Wedneday 5/14, 8pm in the Parish Hall at St Mark's

poetryproject.org/events

This event will also be livestreamed for free on the Project's YouTube channel.

04/29/2025

Submissions to the The 2025 Lisa Brannan Prize close tomorrow Wednesday, April 30, at 11:59PM ET!

The Lisa Brannan Prize is a $1,000 prize for emerging poets in honor of Lisa Brannan, a former Poetry Project intern and poet. In addition to the financial prize, the winning poet will have one poem published in the Poetry Project Newsletter. The generosity and dedication of our interns and volunteers — often emerging poets themselves — is invaluable to The Poetry Project, and we are so honored to offer this prize in the memory of our former intern.

This year's prize will be judged by Laura Henriksen. More information and submission guidelines at poetryproject.org/publications/the-brannan-prize

04/28/2025

Tangie Mitchell and Evie Shockley meet at a juncture where generations of Black feminist poetics converge, diverge, and gather anew. Their poetry builds relationships through shared indebtedness—to each other and to the voices of the past—while forming language for a future horizon.

Monday 5/12, 8pm in the Parish Hall at St Mark's

poetryproject.org/events

This event will also be livestreamed for free on the Project's YouTube channel.

Address

131 E 10th Street
New York, NY
10003

Telephone

+12126740910

Website

http://poetryproject.org/

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