Poets House Moving to Battery Park City
Poets House will relocate to a majestic new waterfront facility in Battery Park City (in Lower Manhattan), with free rent through 2069.

Poetry Hard-Hat Tours
Poets House is sponsoring a series of tours that offer private and public funders—as well as city and state leaders—a chance to experience the future Poets House at several stages of its construction.

The Campaign for Poets House
After surpassing its initial goal of $6.5M and reaching $8.5M, the Poets House Board announced a new Capital Campaign goal of $11M.

"The Invention of Farewell": Poets House Bids Farewell to Soho
The house that holds a country prepares to move a nation's-worth of verse.

Poets House Moves to Battery Park City in 2009

Poets House will move to a majestic new facility at Ten River Terrace in Battery Park City. The permanent home for Poets House will include a state-of-the-art Programming Hall dedicated to poetry-related performance; an expansive Reading Room with sweeping views of the Hudson River and the Statue of Liberty; a spacious, whimsical Children's Room with the capacity to vigorously expand Poets House's poetry programs for children, schools and families; an open-access multimedia archive; a multidisciplinary Exhibition Space; and a poetry-enriched lobby that will spark the curiosity of visitors of all ages. With free rent guaranteed through 2069, Poets House's singular poetry collection, public programming, and gathering-place will endure for generations to come.

For more information, read the latest issue of our Capital Campaign Newsletter. (Adobe Acrobat Required)

Poetry Hard-Hat Tours

In Spring 2009 Poets House will continue to sponsor a series of hard-hat tours that offer private and public funders—as well as city and state leaders—a chance to experience the future Poets House in Battery Park City at several stages of its construction.

The building, located at Ten River Terrace, is a "green" project designed by the renowned Polshek Partnership. The new Poets House, which will meet the LEED gold standard, is designed by Louise Braverman, the acclaimed architect of Poets House's 72 Spring Street location.

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The Campaign for Poets House

Nearly $9.5 million has been pledged to The Campaign for Poets House, which was launched to raise funds for the construction of a permanent home for Poets House and to establish an endowment and reserves to maintain the new space. In 2004, Poets House was awarded 11,000 square feet in a new building in Battery Park City rent-free until 2069, and the Poets House Board stepped forward with lead gifts to initiate the Campaign.

Since then, the Poets House project has attracted support from public agencies, private foundations, and individual donors to help fulfill our mission to create a place for poetry. As construction continues and the rooms of the new Poets House begin to shape, we invite you to be a part of this pivotal moment in our history. Help us keep poetry present in all our lives and in the lives of future generations! Our goal is to raise a total of $11 million.

Gifts in any amount are welcome. For more information about the Campaign for Poets House and giving opportunities, please read the attached letter to Friends of Poets House from Capital Campaign Co-Chairs Margo Viscusi and Bob Kissane. (Adobe Acrobat Required)

Poets House Bids Farewell to Soho

On December 1, 2007, the Poets House Reading Room, home of one of the largest open-access poetry collections in the country, closed to the public as the staff began its preparations to move a nation's-worth of verse to its permanent home in Battery Park City (scheduled to open in 2009). The Poets House archive features 50,000 volumes of poetry from A (Ai, Akhmatova, Auden) to Z (Zagajewski, Zukofsky, Zweig). Among the treasures of the Poets House collection are paintings by E.E. Cummings; handmade Christmas cards made by Robert Frost; first editions of Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales and Wallace Stevens' Man with the Blue Guitar and Other Poems; and a Multimedia Archive featuring over 1,000 audio and visual recordings—rare reel-to-reel broadcasts of Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and Dorothy Parker and recordings of the entire programming history of Poets House, including readings by Joseph Brodsky, Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg and Denise Levertov, cowboy poets and balladeers, Nobelists and hip-hop poets, and recitations by poets in languages ranging from Tagalog to Turkish, Russian to Vietnamese. These treasures will form the centerpiece of Poets House's permanent home, a majestic waterfront facility in Battery Park City, where the collection will endure and expand for generations to come, free and open to the public.

For more information, read Stephen Wolf's panoramic article on the Poets House farewell festivities (all rights reserved by Downtown Express).

Stanley Kunitz: In Memoriam

July 29, 1905–May 14, 2006

The Board and staff of Poets House mourn the loss of our cofounder Stanley Kunitz. We celebrate the extraordinary life of artistry, generosity and integrity that Stanley lived for over 100 years. His vision of community inspired Poets House, a home for poets and poetry lovers and a place where all are welcomed to step into the living tradition of the art. "Poetry is the most indelible testimony we have of the adventures of the spirit," wrote Stanley.

We know that Stanley's legacy will live on in his poems and the communities he hepled to create and nurture.

Learn more about Stanley Kunitz's life and legacy.