Forty Poets, Established and Emerging, Convene at Poets House
A gathering of 40 liars who always speak the truth (as Jean Cocteau once described poets) will convene on Saturday, April 18, from noon to 6pm at 10 River Terrace, as Poets House marks its 40th anniversary. The public is invited to experience a day of live readings overlooking the Hudson River, as the organization that is home to one of the nation’s most extensive poetry collections celebrates its mission of bringing together both established and emerging poets, while offering the rest of us an opportunity to engage with poetry and savor its restorative qualities.
“For the organization, this is a milestone,” said Rob Arnold, executive director of Poets House. “And to me, it reflects decades of serving our community and making poetry accessible to anyone seeking it. The idea has always been to democratize poetry. For 40 years, we’ve had a dedicated space for poetry in New York City, something that didn’t exist for so long before.”
Founded in 1986, Poets House moved to Battery Park City in 2009. Forced to suspend visitation in 2020 during the pandemic, the organization reopened to the public in 2024. For Mr. Arnold, the anniversary marks a “double milestone”—not just a celebration of the past four decades, but also a renewed invitation for the public to engage with the space once again.
“We can’t be out here dragging each other kicking and screaming to pleasure’s gate,” said poet and translator Malvika Jolly, who is among the distinguished readers on Saturday’s schedule. “Sensuous aesthetic pleasures are their own reward. So lovely to be read to, to breathe in a room on the edge of the Hudson River all together, to let the sound of language and non-language wash over us, to catch small phrases by their tails, to free associate, to have a small glass of wine, and to open to each other with our listening ear.”
Ms. Jolly will be reading from her poem, “In the Ambient of the World,” which evokes a collective voice of womanhood across history, geography, and memory:
“Now we know no country but each other.
Dispersed across the ambient of the world,
we are all each other’s dream daughters.”
Ms. Jolly first connected with Poets House in November 2023, when she attended an in-person reading for the James Welch Poetry Prize while serving as a senior editor at Poetry Northwest, one of the organizations that presents the award alongside Indigenous Nations Poets. She later returned to the Poets House as a featured reader.
“The poets need more houses,” Jolly said. “Myself included.” On April 18 (and every Tuesday through Saturday), Poets House offers such a space.
The Poets House 40th Anniversary Celebration Reading (which also features food and music) is open to the public and offers an opportunity to experience poetry in a live, communal setting. For a list of the poets reading their work on April 18, or to reserve tickets (ranging from free to “pay what you can”), please click here.
By Isabella Seepersaud
Editor’s note: The headline of this story is from an essay titled A Defence of Poetry by the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), in which he declared, “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”