The Woodberry Poetry Room is pleased to announce that the recipient of this year’s WPR Creative Fellowship is Jonah Mixon-Webster for his project “Promise/Threat.” He will receive a $4,500 honorarium and a one-week residency at the Eliot House in Gloucester, Massachusetts. It also gives us immense pleasure to announce that Will Dowd has been selected as the recipient of this year’s WPR Creative Grant for his project “Dreamfall.” He will receive a stipend of $2,000. The Poetry Room’s fellowship and grants program offers financial support and research assistance to poets, artists, and scholars interested in undertaking creative projects that would benefit from the resources available at the WPR archive, as well as from time spent at Harvard University as a whole. Past fellowship recipients have included Diana Khoi Nguyen & Jane Wong, Jared Stanley & Sameer Farooq, Sawako Nakayasu, Tracie Morris, Kate Colby, Dan Beachy-Quick, Erin Moure, Eileen Myles, and Fanny Howe. Past grant recipients have included: Harmony Holiday, Lindsay Turner, Tess Gallagher, and Tongo Eisen-Martin. About the Project: During his fellowship year, Mixon-Webster will work toward the …

Ninety years ago, in May 1931, the Woodberry Poetry Room first opened its doors. When the library was founded, it represented the convergence of many technological, cultural, and socio-political movements, which we will explore (in articles and oral histories) throughout the coming year. Just as the Poetry Room did not come into being in an historical vacuum, this anniversary be considered apart from the time in which we find ourselves—in the midst of a global pandemic and of a renewed outcry for social justice (what Harvard professor Vincent Brown has called “America’s everlasting not-yet”). During this unusual anniversary year, the Poetry Room is committed to finding ways to engage and uplift our audiences, through a range of virtual events that continue our mission to “live the questions now…..” Our 90th anniversary season of events will begin in March-April 2021 with online readings by Sonia Sanchez, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Anne Boyer, Lyn Hejinian, and Claudia Rankine (with an introduction by Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) and will culminate in 2022—pending permission to host large in-person events again—with an …

“It’s time to live in all the rooms….”  We are proud to present our Fall 2020 season of virtual events, featuring readings, talks, and performances by Cathy Park Hong (in conversation with Maggie Nelson), Etel Adnan, Alice Notley, M. NourbeSe Philip, Cecilia Vicuña, a roundtable on “Ralph Ellison at Harvard,” and more. All events are free and open to the public (with a maximum capacity of 500 attendees). To attend, all you need to do is register by following the link under each event on our Website (a Zoom link and password will be emailed to you). And, in an effort to foster the same warm and welcoming environment as our in-person programs, we will be dedicating the first 10 minutes of each event to an informal, friendly Meet-and-Greet, which will allow audience members to say “hello” before the official program begins.  To be added to our Mailing List, email us at poetryrm@fas.harvard.edu. Upcoming events are also publicized via Facebook and Twitter.