Poetry Foundation Trustees
We can trace the roots of our organization back more than a century to the founding of Poetry magazine by Harriet Monroe in 1912. To this day, Monroe’s vision, expressed through her “Open Door” policy, informs our work.
Staff and trustees at the Poetry Foundation are also guided by the following organizational values established in 2022:
- Sharing + Collaboration
- Equity + Access
- Innovation + Growth
Learn more about the mission, vision, and values that guide our work.
Trustees
Michelle T. Boone, President
Gwendolyn Perry Davis, Chair
Eugene Y. Lowe, Jr., Vice Chair
John Bracken, Trustee
Joe Brocato, Trustee
Fabiola Delgado, Trustee
Michael Fassnacht, Trustee
Deborah Gillespie, Trustee
Marguerite Griffin, Trustee
Deepa Gupta, Trustee
Andy Jacobs, Trustee
Parneshia Jones, Trustee
Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Trustee
Stuart Miller, Trustee
Lindsey Peckinpaugh, Trustee
Greg Thompson, Trustee
Lynne Thompson, Trustee
Angel Ysaguirre, Trustee
Honorary Trustees
Ruth Lilly
Poetry in the United States has no greater friend than Ruth Lilly, who blessed poetry with her generosity over several decades.
In 1985 Lilly endowed the Ruth Lilly Professorship in Poetry at Indiana University. In 1986 she established the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Awarded annually, the $100,000 prize honors a living US poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition. In 1989 she created two Ruth Lilly Fellowships for $15,000 each, which were given annually by the Poetry Foundation to undergraduate or graduate students. The fellowship was expanded in 2013 with a gift from the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund. Now known as the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, the prize supports five exceptional US poets between 21 and 31 years of age each year. In 2002 Lilly’s lifetime engagement with poetry culminated in a bequest that will enable the Poetry Foundation to promote, in perpetuity, a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture.
Harriet Monroe
Poet, editor, scholar, literary critic, and patron of the arts Harriet Monroe (1860-1936) founded the literary journal Poetry: A Magazine of Verse in 1912. Under Monroe’s guidance, Poetry became and remained a highly regarded and influential journal, surviving a world war and the Great Depression during her tenure. Monroe was the editor of Poetry magazine until her death in 1936.
Harriet Monroe and Ruth Lilly were two women of the Midwest for whom poetry was a passion central to life itself. We celebrate their lasting gifts daily and share them with you through our work.