Since the Academy of American Poets’ earliest days, it has been core to our mission to celebrate contemporary poets, as well as the poets long passed who have shaped American poetry. We were the first organization to offer a major prize to a poet for his or her body of work, not a particular book or poem. And now, each year, we offer more than $200,000 to poets through our American Poets Prizes. We feature more than 250 poets working today in our Poem-a-Day series each year. And, we spotlight many thousands of poets on Poets.org who have published three books or more with feature-length biographies that are accessibly written, keeping our community of K-12 teachers in mind.
While hundreds of thousands of people are reading poems each day, it is still true that many readers are unfamiliar with today’s poets. Poets.org is working to change that.
Because Poets.org does not have an endowment to support the site, we rely on the multitudes of members, donors, and partners who continue to make Poets.org possible. Poets.org is truly people-powered! Thank you for visiting Poets.org and helping us grow the audience for poetry.