Explore the highlights of previous Poetry & the Creative Mind celebrations, including photos as well as lists of poems that were read.

2005 Benefit
2006 Benefit
2007 Benefit
2008 Benefit
2009 Benefit
2010 Benefit
2011 Benefit
2012 Benefit

On April 20, 2010, the Academy of American Poets held its 8th annual benefit, Poetry & The Creative Mind, at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center. Noted actors, musicians, writers, and visual artists participated in this extraordinary evening celebrating the role of contemporary poetry in American culture. Poetry & the Creative Mind celebrates National Poetry Month, established by the Academy in 1996 and now the largest literary celebration in the world.

Our special guest readers were Meryl Streep, Sting, Theodore Sorensen, Julian Schnabel, Jhumpa Lahiri, Matt Dillon, Alan Cumming, Rosanne Cash, Gabriel Byrne, and Frank Bidart, and they read work by poets such as Elizabeth Bishop, Charles Bukowski, Pablo Neruda, Lorine Niedecker, Philip Larkin, and W. B. Yeats.

With the generous support of friends and donors, Poetry & the Creative Mind raised $150,000 for the Academy and National Poetry Month activities.

Opening Remarks
Tree Swenson, Executive Director, Academy of American Poets

Theodore C. Sorensen
Sam Foss, The Calf-Path
Robert Frost, Dedication
John Boyle O'Reilly, Distance
Domingo Ortega, Bullfight Critics (translated by Robert Graves)
John Greenleaf Whittier, from Abraham Davenport

Frank Bidart
Attila József, The Seventh (translated by John Bátki)
Robert Lowell, Man and Wife
Frank O'Hara, Autobiographia Literaria

Gabriel Byrne
Patrick Kavanagh, On Raglan Road
William Butler Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree
William Butler Yeats, When You Are Old
Anonymous, Gaelic Poem

Rosanne Cash
Pablo Neruda, Poetry
Galway Kinnell, After Making Love We Hear Footsteps
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

Alan Cumming
Robert Burns, A Red, Red Rose
William Butler Yeats, Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Tennessee Williams, Life Story
Jayne Cortez, Cultural Operations
Liz Lochhead, Men Talk

Matt Dillon
Barry Gifford, True Love
Charles Bukowski, Something For The Touts, The Nuns, The Grocery Clerks, and You...

Jhumpa Lahiri
Stanley Kunitz, Route Six
Mark Doty, After the Fourth
Mary Oliver, Mussels
Lorine Niedecker, [Remember my little granite pail?]
Lorine Niedecker, [There's a better shine]
Lorine Niedecker, [My Friend Tree]

Julian Schnabel
Virgilio Piñera, The Mountain
W.H. Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts

Sting
Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings
Philip Larkin, This Be the Verse

Meryl Streep
Robert Frost, The Witch of Coos
Elizabeth Bishop, A Cold Spring

Closing Remarks
Eunice J. Panetta, Chairman of the Board, Academy of American Poets

Alan Cumming & Meryl Streep

Jhumpa Lahiri, Julian Schnabel, & Sting

Gabriel Byrne & Alec Baldwin

Theodore Sorensen

Roseanne Cash & Matt Dillon

All photos © Chris Smith