Poetry Foundation Emergency Grant Recipients
UPDATED July 8, 2021
The Poetry Foundation opened an emergency grant program to support poetry and affiliated art organizations struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic, as an extension of our Commitment to our Community in June 2020. The Foundation committed $1 million in emergency grants over two years at that time, and can now report this has doubled to $2 million in emergency funds distributed within one year. The emergency grants were open to poetry organizations and organizations that use poetry as an expression of their missions, located in the United States. This included organizations fighting for social justice and working to advance racial equity in poetry and affiliated art.
One-time emergency grants were awarded in the range of $5,000–$20,000, determined by organizations’ annual budgets and requested funds. A panel of internal self-selected staff reviewed and selected applicants. While the Foundation is still working to define how its grantmaking can best identify and meet the needs of its stakeholders in the long-term, this grant opportunity provided support for urgent needs due to immediate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic; applications are now closed. The Foundation will embark on a strategic planning process to set the future direction of the organization, and to determine how it can serve the poetry ecosystem in sustainable ways, including through grantmaking; the new grants and sponsorship strategy will be announced by year’s end.
Emergency Grants Awarded
A total of 128 organizations received emergency grant funding from the Poetry Foundation from the emergency grant opportunity. Of the recipients:
- 74 of the organizations provide programs for BIPOC, LGBTQIA, and/or other marginalized groups;
- 48 of the organizations focus on programming for youth;
- 88 of the organizations support the local communities in which they are embedded;
- 113, or 88%, of the organizations had not previously received funding from the Poetry Foundation.
Below is the list of emergency grant recipients and the amounts they received in the past year. This list is presented alphabetically.
1455 Literary Arts Inc. — $5,000
826Chi — $15,000
826 Michigan — $20,000
826 New Orleans — $20,000
Alaska Quarterly Review — $10,000
Alliance for Young Artists & Writers — $5,000
Alice James Books — $10,000
American Poetry Museum — $5,000
Art from Ashes Inc. — $15,000
ArtistYear — $20,000
Arts + Literature Laboratory — $15,000
Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge Inc. — $10,000
Arts Council of Princeton — $10,000
Artspace/Slam Richmond Affiliation — $5,000
Asian American Writers Workshop — $20,000
Autumn House Press — $10,000
Bamboo Ridge Press — $5,000
Beyond Baroque — $20,000
Black Table Arts — $5,000
Blue Stoop of CultureTrust — $10,000
BOA Editions, Ltd. — $15,000
Boston Scores — $5,000
Bowery Poetry Club — $20,000
BreakBread Literacy Project — $10,000
California Poets in the Schools — $10,000
Cambridge Community Center — $20,000
CantoMundo — $20,000
CavanKerry Press — $10,000
Cave Canem Foundation — $20,000
Center for the Art of Translation — $15,000
City of Asylum — $20,000
Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation — $15,000
Chicago Hopes for Kids — $15,000
Chicago Poetry Center — $20,000
Community Advocacy Through Poetry / Community Justice Project— $15,000
Community Building Art Works — $10,000
Community Literature Initiative — $15,000
Community-Word Project, Inc. — $15,000
ConTextos — $10,000
Copper Canyon Press — $20,000
D.C. Creative Writing Workshop — $20,000
Deep Center — $20,000
Desert Island Supply Co.— $20,000
DewMore Baltimore — $20,000
Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network / Intersection for the Arts — $10,000
Dove Mission Initiative Inc — $5,000
DreamYard's Bronx Poetry Project — $20,000
Fonograf Editions — $5,000
Free Verse — $5,000
Gemini Ink — $15,000
Girls Write Now — $15,000
GLOW Academy — $5,000
Good Journey Development Foundation — $5,000
Graft Living — $5,000
Green Mountains Review — $5,000
Hope at Hand, Inc. — $15,000
Hurston Wright Foundation — $20,000
In-Na-Po — $15,000
Indiana Writers Center — $5,000
Inside Out Literary Arts — $15,000
International Women's Writing Guild — $5,000
Just Buffalo Literary Center — $20,000
Kearny Street Workshop Inc. — $15,000
Kuumba Lynx — $10,000
Kundiman — $20,000
Lambda Literary — $20,000
Letras Latinas — $15,000
Life Journeys Writers Club, Inc. — $5,000
Litmus Press — $10,000
Litquake Foundation — $10,000
Maine Inside Out — $20,000
Mano Amiga — $20,000
Mass Poetry — $10,000
Michigan Quarterly Review — $10,000
Mighty Writers — $10,000
Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop — $20,000
Missoula Writing Collaborative — $10,000
Mizna — $5,000
Music in Common — $5,000
Nebraska Writers Collective — $10,000
Noemi Press — $15,000
Nuyorican Poets Cafe — $20,000
NY Writers Coalition Inc. — $15,000
Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora — $10,000
Path with Art — $10,000
Poet Lore — $5,000
Poets & Writers, Inc. — $15,000
Poetry and Art as Therapy for a Spirit in Grief / Northwest New Mexico Arts Council — $5,000
Poetry Project — $20,000
Poetry Society of America — $20,000
Poetry Society of New York — $10,000
RHINO Poetry/The Poetry Forum, Inc. — $5,000
River of Words Program at Saint Mary's College — $5,000
Saint Louis Poetry Center — $10,000
Shout Mouse Press — $10,000
Small Press Traffic — $5,000
Snow City Arts — $15,000
Speaking Truth to Power From Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants (CERI) — $10,000
Split This Rock — $10,000
Sundress Publications — $5,000
TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics — $5,000
Teachers and Writers Collaborative, Inc. — $15,000
The Care Center — $20,000
The Diatribe Inc.— $10,000
The Lab — $10,000
The Midwest Writing Center — $10,000
The Open Mouth Literary Center — $5,000
The Oxford American Literary Project — $5,000
The Word | A Storytelling Sanctuary — $5,000
The YMCA's Downtown Writers Center — $15,000
Tieton Arts & Humanities — $10,000
Tioga County Council on the Arts, Inc. — $5,000
Triple Canopy — $5,000
Ugly Duckling Presse, Ltd. — $10,000
University of Arizona Poetry Center — $20,000
University of Wynwood, Inc. (O, Miami) — $10,000
Urban Think — $5,000
Urban Word — $20,000
Wick Poetry Center — $20,000
Woodland Pattern — $20,000
WordPlay Cincy — $15,000
Words Beats & Life — $10,000
Writers in Baltimore Schools — $10,000
Writers in the Schools (WITS) — $15,000
Writers Without Margins, Inc. (WWM) — $10,000
Young Authors Greenhouse — $10,000
Young Poets Program — $5,000
Youth Speaks — $20,000
Zoeglossia — $5,000