Poetry Society Of America

Annual awardseach year, the poetry society offers more than a dozen awards to honor and support poets at every stage of their careers, ranging from an award for a student poet to best first book to lifetime achievement in poetry. Recipients of the poetry society's most distinguished award, the frost medal, have included gwendolyn brooks, wallace stevens, marianne moore, john ashbery, and lucille clifton. Recipients of the four quartets prize for best poetry sequence have included dante micheaux, danez smith, and john murillo. Each year, the poetry society also awards two chapbook fellowships, which include a prize of $1,000 and the publication of their first chapbook, along with mentorship by an established poet in the editorial and publication process.

Poetry and public spacesince 1992, the poetry society has presented poetry in motion, which places poems in transit systems around the country, creating unexpected and meaningful encounters in public spaces between poems and millions of readers. In 2021, the program expanded to include the washington dc area metro system and path/port authority stations in new jersey and new york. The program serves approximately 9 million people each year. Poetry in motion is now the cornerstone of a larger array of programs in public space, including partnerships with civic organizations to present poetry-based public art projects. In 2022, the poetry society partnered with the downtown brooklyn partnership to preset seeing into tomorrow, which transformed poems by richard wright into large-scale installations on walls in several brooklyn neighborhoods. In april 2023, the poetry society launched park poems, a partnership with nyc parks to place poems in five public parks, one in each borough. In 2024, park poems expanded to include partnerships with new york state parks and the national park service. This program area also includes poems on wheels, a partnership with meals on wheels chapters around the country to provide poems along with nourishing meals to homebound seniors.