Poetry Foundation Spring 2022 Updates
The Poetry Foundation began posting regular Foundation Updates as part of its Commitment to Our Community in 2020; since then, these updates have served as ways for the Foundation to communicate the changes it has been undertaking to the public.
As announced in the One-Year Commitment Update in July 2021, the Poetry Foundation has been working with Lord Cultural Resources on a new Strategic Plan for the Foundation, which will inform its work going forward. A key aspect of this process was the Audience Perception Survey announced in the spring; this feedback provided invaluable insights on how people in the literary world perceive the Foundation, and how they think it can grow.
The Poetry Foundation published its 2020–21 Annual Report, a resource to look back at the past two years of poetry and change, in May 2022. Transparency remains a key tenant of how the Foundation conducts itself, and this will continue to be the case when the Strategic Plan is complete. While this will be the last Foundation Update in this form, the Foundation plans to continue regular communications.
Building Reopening
For the first time since March 2020, the Poetry Foundation opened its doors to the public for National Poetry Month this April. The Foundation celebrated this moment on April 7 with the launch party for the Respect the Mic anthology, welcoming a full house of poets and readers.
The reopening includes the debut of a new in-person exhibition, Monica Ong: Planetaria, a collection of visual poems that leverage the visual language of astronomy to explore the precarious territories of motherhood, women in science, and diasporic identity.
The Foundation has also updated its opening hours to include later nights on Thursdays and regular Saturday hours. Please consult the Visit page to plan your next trip to the Poetry Foundation.
Grantmaking Updates
As announced at the end of 2021, the Poetry Foundation has launched a new grants strategy.
The first effort of this strategy is the Renewal and Recovery grants program, launched on April 18, 2022, open to those who received Emergency Grants from the Poetry Foundation in 2020–2021.
This is an evolving area for the Foundation, which the forthcoming Strategic Plan will inform. Information about the Foundation’s grantmaking and the literary prizes it awards, and the differing functions of these two, can be found on the new Awards and Grants page. Those with questions about the current state of grantmaking at the Foundation are encouraged to visit the Grants FAQ.
New Editor of Poetry Magazine
The Poetry Foundation announced Adrian Matejka as the new editor of Poetry magazine after a national search; Matejka begins his tenure at the magazine shortly before it celebrates its 110th anniversary in the fall.
Matejka follows a series of guest editors who curated three issues each from 2021–2022 as the magazine, like all areas of the Foundation, considered the space it takes in the literary world and how it can adapt to better reflect poetry today.
Of his new role and vision for it, Matejka said, “I am committed to reimagining Poetry not only as a venue for poetics, but more importantly, as one that is in service of poets and treats writers as the gifts that they are.”
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