Hope Is the Thing

When a year comes to an end, the opportunity to reflect on its successes and challenges while imagining what can be accomplished in the year to come is a gift. It means that we’re still here and have a reason for being—many reasons, indeed. 

In myriad ways, 2023 was a disheartening year. As we continued to recover from the effects of a global pandemic—while still living with the virus that caused it—climate change, financial unpredictability, threats to democracy, and unimaginable violence and sorrow have impacted communities near and far. While poetry may not be the cure for these ills, it can serve as both a balm and a vehicle to express what cannot be conveyed through a newsreel, social media post, or other forms of communication. Poetry brings hope when we are otherwise overwhelmed by hopelessness. 

Hope is the thing ...
Hope was always the thing!
What else did we give each other
from such distances?

Excerpt from “Every day as a wide field, every page” by Naomi Shihab Nye (Poetry, March 2021)

So what brings us hope? 

In 2023, the Poetry Foundation distributed more than four million dollars to poets, writers, and nonprofit organizations through its awards, fellowships, commissions, contractual services, and grants. The literary arts remain the least funded of the arts, and it is a privilege to share the Foundation’s bequest to amplify poetry and celebrate poets.

Poetry magazine continued its commitment to publishing diverse perspectives and emergent voices, including 126 first-time contributors, representing 50% of the poets published last year. We also welcomed a third poet to serve on the board of trustees, which provides the Foundation’s governance, stewardship, and strategic direction. 

At home in Chicago, the Poetry Foundation supported several initiatives that united the community around poetry. Chicago named its first poet laureate, award-winning poet, educator, composer, performer, and producer, avery r. young. We collaborated with Chicago Public Library to support the first citywide poetry reading initiative, One Poem, One Chicago, with a collective reading of beloved local poet Gwendolyn Brooks’s seminal collection, Blacks, and a series of events celebrating her legacy.  

Poetry initiatives supported by the Foundation also stretched beyond the Chicago community. In the spring, high school students from 54 states and US territories gathered in Washington, DC, to compete in the Poetry Out Loud finals, our ongoing partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). This dynamic poetry recitation competition helps students master public speaking, build confidence, and engage with literary history and contemporary life through poetry. Each year, Poetry Out Loud participants have the chance to win generous monetary prizes and educational resources for their schools. 

Later in the summer, hundreds of K–12 and community college educators gathered in Miami to attend the Summer Poetry Teachers Institute. This free, four-and-a-half-day event included tailored seminars, hands-on workshops, and break-out sessions that allowed educators to study and discuss poetry with renowned practitioners and expert teachers. Participants left with poetry-centered lesson plans to bring back to their classrooms.

In August, the Poetry Foundation awarded Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships to five poets. The fellowships are intended to support exceptional US poets between 21 and 31 years of age, prioritizing poets who have not had substantial institutional support in their careers thus far. The five fellows joined Poetry Foundation staff for a luncheon and performed at their first public reading together in the Poetry Foundation’s performance space.

In October, the Poetry Foundation honored the outstanding lifetime achievement of poet Kimiko Hahn by bestowing the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, which is one of the most prestigious awards given to poets in the US and among the nation’s largest literary prizes. Poet, performer, and librettist Douglas Kearney received the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism for Optic Subwoof, a collection of talks he presented for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series. The Poetry Foundation also introduced a new award in 2023: the Pegasus Award for Service in Poetry recognizes commitment and extraordinary work in poetry and the literary arts through administration, advocacy, education, publishing, or service. The inaugural award went to Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady, the poets who founded Cave Canem in 1996 to remedy the underrepresentation and isolation of African-American poets in the literary landscape.

As we state in our mission and emphasized in a message to our communities in November, we believe in the power of words to transform lives. Poets and their poetry are the conduits through which that transformation happens; the Poetry Foundation is devoted to being a platform to nourish that transformation. In 2024, we look forward to elevating poetry to new heights alongside our partners and poetry communities with hope as the guiding force behind everything we do.

To learn more about the Poetry Foundation’s 2023 highlights, please watch this brief video.