New York, NY—August 25, 2006—Poets House and the Poetry Society of America, two of America's pre-eminent poetry organizations, announce the award of a second major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, (NEH), which will bring Branching Out: Poetry for the 21st Century—Series Two—to seven cities across the United States. This continues and expands on the first series of talks by distinguished poet/scholars on classic and contemporary poets. NEH awards are the result of a rigorous, highly competitive review process. The receipt of a grant for a second series confirms what poets, librarians, and audiences have been saying about the first series: remarkable!
Cities participating in the second series are, of the original group, Fresno, New Orleans, and Milwaukee joined by Little Rock; Hartford, CT; Salt Lake City; and Jacksonville. Six programs per library system will be presented between Spring 2007 and Spring 2008.
Both partnering organizations, Poets House and the Poetry Society of America, have a distinguished record of presenting innovative and exciting poetry programming.
Branching Out develops from Poets House's Poetry in The Branches, which pioneered a model for working with poetry in community library settings. Through the use of the PITB model, Poets House has trained librarians throughout the United States in poetry collection development, display, and programming. To kick off the Branching Out initiative, librarians from the new host cities will come to Poets House on October 27-28 to take part in the fifth annual Poetry in The Branches National Institute, a conference consistently rated, "The best training conference I have ever attended."
Supporting and enhancing the programs will be the Poetry Society's hugely successful Poetry in Motion ® program. Each host city will display the well-loved poetry placards, in this case featuring poetry by the subjects of the talks, throughout their transportation systems.
The project web site, www.poetrybranchingout.org, now contains a wealth of information on the presenting poets and the subjects. This includes biographies, bibliographies, poetry, photographs, timelines and, most recently, sound clips from the presentations. Content will continue to be added as Series Two rolls out.
Every poet presenting in the first series, including former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Muldoon, MacArthur Fellow Susan Stewart, Pulitzer finalist Elizabeth Alexander, and Guggenheim Fellow MartÍn Espada, has enthusiastically agreed to continue on the roster. They will be joined by ten new presenters including Robert Bly, Pablo Medina, Jane Hirshfield and Carol Muske-Dukes. Subjects include Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams, Anna Akhmatova, Gwendolyn Brooks, Pablo Neruda, Rumi and Hafez, Octavio Paz, Basho, and Sylvia Plath.
In looking forward to a second series, the County Librarian in Fresno said that "our audience spanned a wide range in ages—from teens to seniors—and was culturally diverse. Through surveys and audience comments, Fresno attendees rated the Branching Out programs "outstanding'".
Edward Hirsch, award-winning poet and President of the Guggenheim Foundation said that "people are eager to have someone talk to them about poetry in passionate, rigorous, and accessible ways. The non-academic setting is a special pleasure. I have had some of the deepest reading experiences of my life in public libraries, and it is good to be able to give something back to those libraries in the form of the highest literary programming."
Mary Jo Salter said, on the heels of what she called a "life-changing" visit to post-Katrina New Orleans, that she was "deeply moved at the effort people had made to make culture continue to happen." She looked forward to a continuing role in this "extremely worthy series...The audience for poetry is growing: I want to be part of that exciting movement."
Branching Out: Series Two, with its original and new partners, and its continuing and new presenters, allows that "exciting movement" to take deeper root and grow.
Poets House is a 45,000 volume poetry library and lively literary center that provides a locus of discussion and research for writers, students, scholars, and the general public five days a week, free of charge. Its signature program, the Poets House Showcase, is an unparalleled annual exhibit of all the poetry published in the United States. Its online Directory of American Poetry Books is a cumulative, annotated index of all the books that have been in the Showcase (since 1990) and is available, free, at www.poetshouse.org.
The Poetry Society of America was founded in 1910 to create a public forum for poetry and works to raise the public's awareness and appreciation of the art. The PSA presents distinguished lectures and readings, regularly partnering with such organizations as The New School, The New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University, the Chicago Humanities Festival, the International Center of Photography, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and now Poets House to bring programming that is unusual in scope into communities across the country. The PSA Festival of New American Poets and PSA's innovative Chapbook Fellowship Program introduce the work of twenty emerging poets biennially. The PSA's popular Poetry in Motion ® program currently reaches over 11 million Americans every day in twelve cities from coast to coast.
