Poets & Writers Explores the Depths of Recent Dispute at Poets House

Poets & Writers staff dive into the deep end of the situation at Poets House, with a thorough article that surveys everything from the organization's abrupt closing and mass firing, to the ensuing staff response, and the recent community letter asking for transparency and rebuilding. They have interviewed board member and poet Monica Youn, who says, as a UAW member herself: "If I thought for one second that that the closing of Poets House was in some way a pretext for either union busting or retaliation for complaints about DEI issues, I would resign from the board immediately." More:

Youn also noted that the board did not furlough staff because they are not positive what form Poets House will take in the future. “We did not want our staff to not be seriously looking for jobs and to think that this existential crisis was only short-term—this was a long-term crisis for our revenue model, and Poets House was likely to change its structure and functions in order to survive in this new reality,” she said.

P&W also talked to former employees of Poets House:

All former employees interviewed for this article reiterate how much they believe in Poets House as a space for artists and poetry, and that they want to see the organization live up to its mission and values. One said: “Have the whole place—in writing—top to bottom be representative of the glorious, beautiful, hopeful, inspiring mission statement that draws us all to the space.”

Some stated that what they see as a disconnect between the organization’s stated mission and how it treated its employees, many of whom are poets and artists, is not unique to Poets House—though perhaps not equal in degree—and is perhaps part of a more widespread “veneer of liberalism or wokeness in the literary world,” as one puts it. One former Poets House worker says, “I think that the literary world really needs to reckon with the ways in which it’s not so different from the corporate world, the ways in which we use this sort of self-valorizing idea of art, this idea of poetry as this end in itself that justifies any means and justifies all sorts of bad behavior.”

Read on at Poets & Writers.