Poetry Foundation

• 1. Introduction

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  At the end of 2024, the Poetry Foundation in Chicago reported net assets of $312.2 million. That is a striking sum for an institution built around verse. Its roots lie in a small magazine and one very large gift. How does a publisher of poems become a foundation of this size? What did it choose to build, fund and give away? And what happened when the poets it served challenged the people running it?

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• 2. Harriet Monroe's Magazine

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  In 1912, Harriet Monroe founded Poetry magazine and became its first editor and publisher. She held both roles until she died in 1936. Five years after her death, in 1941, the Modern Poetry Association was founded to support the magazine's publication. For decades that association stood behind Poetry. The Poetry Foundation is its direct successor, and the magazine still appears under the foundation's name. Monroe's name also lives on in the foundation's work, since a research institute was later named for her. A different name, however, would soon matter as much to the magazine as hers: that of Ruth Lilly.

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• 3. The Lilly Bequest

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  Ruth Lilly, a philanthropist, left a bequest to the Modern Poetry Association, and the gift later grew to about $200 million. According to Dana Goodyear in The New Yorker, the magazine learned in 2001 that it would receive the money. It then spent about a year reorganizing its governing board before the bequest became public. The Poetry Foundation was established in 2003.

  Leadership changed quickly. Joseph Parisi, who had edited the magazine for two decades, first moved to lead the new foundation. He named Christian Wiman as his successor at Poetry. A few months later Parisi resigned, and the board recruited John Barr as president. Barr served until 2013. Then the poet and critic Robert Polito, founder of the graduate writing program at The New School, took over. In December 2015, the foundation named Henry S. Bienen, president emeritus of Northwestern University, as its president. His time in the job would end abruptly in the summer of 2020.

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• 4. The June 2020 Reckoning

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  In June 2020, the foundation drew criticism for how it responded to protests against police violence and racism after the murder of George Floyd. An open letter signed by more than 1,000 poets and supporters called for the resignation of Bienen and of board chair Willard Bunn III. Both men resigned on the 10th of June 2020.

  The foundation then issued a public letter committing itself to organizational change. It later reported on an equity audit and on related internal reforms. The question left open was who would lead the institution next, and in what direction.

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• 5. A New Strategy

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  In April 2021, the foundation named Michelle Boone as its next president. Later that year it announced a new grantmaking strategy that would distribute $9 million over three years. It also said it had begun its first strategic-planning process since 2006.

  When the 2022 strategic plan was announced, the foundation explained a structural change. It was moving from a private operating foundation to a private nonoperating foundation, so that grantmaking could become a larger part of its work. In 2022 it launched a grants program, with that initial $9 million commitment, to support nonprofit literary arts organizations across the United States.

  The foundation remains a 501(c)(3) exempt organization based in Chicago. A board of trustees governs it. As of 2026, Gwendolyn Perry Davis chaired that board and Boone served as president. The money that made all of this possible also paid for something far more physical than a grant.

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• 6. The Building on Near North Side

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  Designed by John Ronan, the foundation's headquarters opened in 2011 in the Near North Side of Chicago. Part of the Lilly bequest paid for it. Inside, visitors find a public poetry library, an exhibition space and reading areas. The building also hosts free events, including readings and other live programs open to everyone. Upstairs and alongside, it provides office and editorial space for the staff of both the foundation and Poetry magazine. The same structure that holds the library also houses the people who select the poems. Yet some of the foundation's best-known programs reach people who never enter it.

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• 7. Programs Beyond the Walls

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  In 2005, the foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts created Poetry Out Loud. It is a national recitation competition for high school students. Memorizing and performing poems is meant to build public speaking skills along with knowledge of poetry.

  Two years later, in 2007, the foundation introduced Harriet, a literary blog. It began as a group blog. The foundation later described it as having evolved from early long-form journals into a broader forum for poetry news, commentary and community discussion. Poets who have blogged there include Christian Bök, Stephanie Burt, Wanda Coleman, Kwame Dawes, Camille Dungy, Eileen Myles, Craig Santos Perez and Patricia Smith.

  The Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute launched in 2008. Its job is to convene poets, scholars and others in the literary arts to discuss poetry and related issues. According to the foundation, all of this serves one mission: to amplify poetry and celebrate poets by fostering spaces for all to create, experience and share poetry.

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• 8. Prizes and Fellowships

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  A winged horse named Pegasus has long appeared on the covers of Poetry magazine and in its related branding. It gives its name to the Pegasus Awards, which are generally presented every year. The Young People's Poet Laureate, formerly the Children's Poet Laureate, is a two-year appointment for an author of children's poetry. It carries a $25,000 annual stipend plus funding for a project that promotes poetry to young people, families, teachers and librarians. The Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism pays $10,000 for an outstanding book-length work of criticism published in the United States in the prior calendar year. The Pegasus Award for Service in Poetry was established in 2023 and carries $25,000.

  The richest honor is the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. It gives $100,000 for lifetime achievement to a living American poet. Rigoberto Gonzalez received it in 2025, Li-Young Lee in 2024, Kimiko Hahn in 2023 and Patricia Smith in 2021. In 2022, to mark the 110th anniversary of Poetry, the foundation awarded several of the prizes at once.

  Younger writers have their own route. The Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships go to five American poets between the ages of 21 and 31 each year. Each fellow receives $27,000, up from $25,800 in 2022.

  A newer prize arrives in November 2025 partnership terms. The foundation and Graywolf Press announced the Pegasus Poetry Book Prize for a poet aged 40 or older with an unpublished first or second collection. It offers $10,000 and publication by Graywolf. It replaces the former Emily Dickinson First Book Award and is offered periodically rather than yearly. The first winner is due to be named in October 2026.

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