Learn more about becoming a community advocate and fundraising for Brooklyn Poets (and winning some prizes along the way) here!

“Poetry remakes the future… you write into the future, and then somehow the future does catch up with what you’ve written.” – Alice Notley

As we wrap up another year in a present insistent on being remade, we need your support to provide the tools poets need to take up their work.

It’s a tumultuous time for poetry and the arts. From the headline grabbing cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts, to censorship by threat of firing or deportation, to the loss of teaching jobs and financial aid in academia, to the trickle down effects that lead to the loss of foundational and individual donors as they rush to save the larger institutions—it’s never been harder to be a community-based arts organization, and it’s never been more essential. But we know we can move forward with the support of our community.

In the past year, we held to our mission of cultivating community and craft for all, especially those marginalized by traditional literary and academic structures, by providing more workshops, fellowships, events and free community programming than ever before. Thanks to the support of our community we were able to offer:

81 workshops serving 800 students from all backgrounds, from first time writers to college students to poets with published collections to retirees returning to their love of writing after a lifetime away.
56 fellowships enabling promising students to enroll is a workshop aligned with their writing goals and background free of charge. We also offered partial fellowship awards to 60 finalists.
New sliding scale admission to workshops and craft labs, utilized by 20% of workshop participants and over 50% of craft lab attendees.
40 events serving over 2,600 attendees, including our Yawp, Reading Series, book launches, showcases and benefit readings.
Our fourth annual 3-day poetry festival featuring 23 poets, including Tina Chang, Cornelius Eady and Tongo Eisen-Martin.
Our sixth Mentorship Program cohort, a yearlong program that provides 12 writers with sustained, individualized mentorship as a financially accessible alternative to an MFA.
Free community programming featuring members of our workshop faculty, serving over 2,100 participants in our space at 144 Montague and online.
180 paid reading & teaching opportunities for poets at all stages of their career.

To support this work in 2027, we’re raising $50,000 and we need your help to get there. As Audre Lorde said, “Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.” Poetry can’t solve everything, but it’s vital that poets have spaces like Brooklyn Poets to language the present and remake the future. Donate now to help us remake the future, today.

You can learn more about our impact here.

Donor perks	$100	$250	$500	$1,000
Recognition on Brooklyn Poets website	✔	✔	✔	✔
Complimentary 1-year membership		✔	✔	✔
Brooklyn Poets tote bag (first year only)		✔	✔	✔
A recently published book by a Brooklyn Poets fellow or community member			✔
Four recently published books by Brooklyn Poets fellows and community members				✔
Complimentary admission for two to our annual Community Celebration				✔

Here's what your donation could support:

$100 will enable a poet to attend a three-hour craft lab for free

$250 will cover the cost of a free and open to the public writing group

$500 will cover the cost of a fellowship, enabling a promising poet to attend a workshop for free

$1,000 will cover the cost of a week’s worth of free community groups

$2,500 will cover financial aid for one student in our Mentorship Program

$5,000 will provide essential operating support allowing us to continue building programs to keep poetry & community accessible

Support Brooklyn Poets 2027 Operations

Keep poetry, community and craft accessible to all, in Brooklyn & beyond.