Program
Facing Life: Fall 2025 Season
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“Facing Life I take up this unbridled cry,“ exclaimed Peruvian poet and activist Magda Portal, whose life and work are centered in Victoria Martinez’s exhibition at the Poetry Foundation, Frente a la vida / Facing Life.
The Poetry Foundation’s fall 2025 season builds on this legacy and pursues a double dare: we gather through poetry to face ourselves more honestly, while also facing the world and refusing to look away. Each moment arrives without precedent, but poetry helps us find the words as we stand face to face, transformed by the “enormous sea, human Sea.”
Facing Life I take up this unbridled
cry.
Like a mural, our season showcases the many faces of poetry’s “human Sea” in Chicago and the Midwest:
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Poetry Foundation
Join us for the last ever live taping of the VS podcast featuring poets Cornelius Eady and Major Jackson!
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Poetry Foundation
Join us for a reception and artist talk to celebrate the opening of the exhibition Frente a la vida / Facing Life.
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Poetry Foundation
A multilingual celebration of European Day of Languages and a new Black British Poetry folio in Poetry magazine.
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Poetry Foundation
A poetry reading with Taylor Byas, Bryan Byrdlong, jason crawford, Shanekia McIntosh, and Keith S. Wilson.
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Poetry Foundation
A Rapbrary-curated evening of poetry and music performances by Wallace, J Bambii, Darius Caffey, and Mason Pippenger.
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Poetry Foundation
A public reading featuring the recipients of the 2025 Pegasus Awards: Rigoberto González, Amy Stolls, and Kazim Ali.
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Poetry Foundation
A poetry reading featuring Martín Espada alongside Carlos Cumpián, Faylita Hicks, and Allison Joseph.
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Poetry Foundation
A poetry reading on Trans Day of Remembrance with Temperance Aghamohammadi, River Coello, jzl jmz, féi iká shumarí, and Rose Zinnia.
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Poetry Foundation
A presentation of avery r. young’s Chicago Poet Laureate project, Chicago Soul Poem: A City That Writes Together.
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In Person
Poets Pádraig Ó Tuama and E. Ethelbert Miller join the Fulcrum Point New Music Project for their 27th annual Peace Concert at Fourth Presbyterian Church.