Grantee-Partner Profile

Meet Our Grantee-Partner: Cave Canem

Originally Published: September 03, 2024
Black and white photo of Jennifer Falú, wearing a black beanie and thick-rimmed glasses, reading at a podium. In front of her are workshop attendees, who see from behind. Text reads Cave Canem Fall 2023 Equity in Verse Grantee-Partner.

Regional workshop poet sharing their work at a culminating Cave Canem reading. Photo courtesy of Nicholas Nichol.

Mission: Cave Canem is a nonprofit organization, committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of Black poets. Founded by artists for artists, Cave Canem fosters community across the diaspora to enrich the field by facilitating a nurturing space in which to learn, experiment, create, and present. Cave Canem develops audiences for Black voices that have worked and are working in the craft of poetry.

Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady noticed a lack of Black poets represented in the literary curriculum at all stages of education in the United States. As Black poets, they knew how difficult it was to access resources to develop one’s craft, such as writing retreats, residencies, grants, and MFA programs. They established Cave Canem Foundation, Inc. (Cave Canem) in 1996 to remedy the underrepresentation and isolation of Black poets in the literary landscape.

That summer, Cave Canem welcomed an inaugural cohort of 26 fellows to a residency of poetry workshops and readings at Mount St. Alphonsus Seminary in Esopus, New York. Thus began the Cave Canem Retreat, where Cave Canem Fellows study with a world-class faculty and attend intensive poetry workshops, thought-provoking presentations, public and private readings, and participate in creative discourse in a supportive community. The annual weeklong retreat is free to Black poets 21 and older.

A photo of Cave Canem fellows, faculty, and staff at the annual Cave Canem Retreat in 2024. They are smiling and sitting in rows on concrete stairs.

Cave Canem Fellows, faculty, and staff at the annual Cave Canem Retreat in 2024. Photo courtesy of Marcus Jackson.

In 2003, the Cave Canem Retreat moved from Esopus to the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. To date, the Retreat has supported more than 500 poets from the United States and internationally, many of whom have gone on to distinguished literary careers and have been published broadly. Cave Canem Fellows include National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winners, MacArthur Fellowship recipients, poets laureate, literary editors (including Poetry magazine’s Adrian Matejka), and educators.

Beyond the fellowships provided through the Retreat, Cave Canem offers a suite of core programs. Cave Canem's Legacy Series, established in 2001, celebrates the work of an elder Black poet who has produced a significant and/or influential body of work. Moderated discussions and conversations address historical, aesthetic, political, and personal influences on the featured poets’ craft and thought. Cave Cane also hosts readings and presentations highlighting poetry from Cave Canem Fellows and the African diaspora with the goal of exposing Black poets to new audiences and audiences to Black poetry. Programs and publications seek to enlarge the American literary canon, democratize archives, and expand possibilities for students, aspiring poets, and readers. All programs and events are free and open to the public.

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Cave Canem is the current phase of an institutional, poetic project that began during the Harlem Renaissance, continued through the Black Arts Movement, and seeks to respond to the needs of Black poets in the United States and throughout the African diaspora. Whether Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady knew this at the time of their founding the organization is for them to say, but the gift they have given to the world attests to a deep love for our
community.
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— Dante Micheaux, Cave Canem’s director of programs

Cave Canem has grown to a distinguished faculty of 34 and a global workshop community of more than 1,000. Cave Canem serves mostly adults of African descent in New York City and across the United States along with Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, and Arab American adults ages 21 to those in their 90s. Cave Canem also prioritizes LGBTQ+ inclusion and serving other marginalized communities.

In 2023, the Poetry Foundation introduced a new annual award to recognize commitment and extraordinary work in poetry and the literary arts through administration, advocacy, education, publishing, or service. The first recipients of the Pegasus Award for Service in Poetry were Cave Canem founders Derricotte and Eady. Several Poetry Foundation grantee-partner organizations’ founders identified Derricotte and Eady as mentors and have developed their organizational models after Cave Canem. These organizations continue to broaden Derricotte and Eady’s legacy of service to poetry and poets. 

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The impact of Toi and Cornelius’s work as mentors, collaborators, and advocates cannot be overstated. As a Cave Canem fellow myself, I have been the grateful recipient of their service to poetry and the path they’ve created for countless other Black
poets.
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— Adrian Matejka, Poetry magazine editor and Cave Canem Fellow

Receiving an Equity in Verse grant from the Poetry Foundation has enabled Cave Canem to remain steadfast in its commitment to nurturing a thriving community of poets, advocating for equitable representation, and propelling Black poetry to new heights. The grant supported general operations and capacity-building initiatives that provided staff with the resources to continue executing and sharing program offerings for free to participants and audience members.

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