Home > Post Home > Academics > Schools & Colleges > College of Liberal Arts and Sciences > Resources & Facilities > Poetry Center

Poetry Center

Established in 1974, the LIU Post Poetry Center is the longest-running literary center at any university in the metropolitan New York area. Every year the Poetry Center sponsors a series of poetry readings and other events, as well as a contest that was begun by the English Department in the 1960s. The gala event of the academic year is the annual Poetry Awards Night, held in April. Guest poets for this event have included such internationally acclaimed poets as Robert Bly, Richard Eberhart, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, David Ignatow, Galway Kinnell, Kenneth Koch, Maxine Kumin, Denise Levertov, W. S. Merwin, Joyce Carol Oates, Linda Pastan, Mary Jo Salter, Steven Spender, William Stafford, Jean Valentine, and Richard Wilbur. The Poetry Center also hosts an annual Poetry Appreciation Day reading, at which members of the LIU Post faculty read a few poems they genuinely enjoy.

The Poetry Center has maintained a principle of bringing to campus poets who write in different traditions and come from different parts of the United States and abroad, as well as writers from the Long Island community. A number of Native American poets, including Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki), Maurice Kenny (Mohawk), Lance Henson (Cheyenne), Barney Bush (Shawnee and Cayuga), and Jeanetta Calhoun Mish (Lenape), have read in the series, and The Thunder Bird Sisters, a musical group from the Shinnecock Reservation, have performed. Previous directors of the Poetry Center, include Jeanne Welcher (1974-1980), Katherine C. Hill-Miller (1981-85), Norbert Krapf (1985-2004), and Isaac Cates (2004-2008).