The 14th Annual New York City Poetry Festival
July 12 + 13, 2025
Nolan Park, Governors Island
11:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Ready for one of the most unique experiences you’ll have this summer in New York City?
Travel by water to Governors Island and submerge yourself in the awe-inspiring world of New York City poetry—and so much more. You will never experience anything like it.
Hear poetry hailing from every corner of NYC
Share your poems on our open-mic stage
Soak up the sun with friends, including the ones you’ll make
Enjoy food and drinks from a delicious range of NYC food trucks and vendors
Explore local art, bookmakers, music, theater, and the weird and natural wonders of the island
Our 2025 Headliners are…
Naomi Shihab Nye
Naomi Shihab Nye describes herself as a “wandering poet.” She has spent more than 40 years traveling the country and the world to lead writing workshops and inspiring students of all ages. Nye was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother and grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio. Drawing on her Palestinian-American heritage, the cultural diversity of her home in Texas, and her experiences traveling in Asia, Europe, Canada, Mexico, and the Middle East, Nye uses her writing to attest to our shared humanity.
Eileen Myles
Widely renowned, poet, novelist, performer, and art journalist, Eileen Myles is a trailblazer whose decades of literary and artistic work, in the words of the New York Review of Books, “set a bar for openness, frankness, and variability few lives could ever match.” Myles is the author of more than twenty books including a “Working Life” (Grove, 2023), I Must Be Living Twice: New & Selected Poems, and a re-issue of Chelsea Girls. Poems written by—and a character based on—Myles appeared in seasons 2 and 3 of the Emmy-winning Amazon show Transparent. Their memoir, Afterglow (a dog memoir),(Grove, 2017) paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of a beloved
confidant: the pit bull called Rosie.
Anne Waldman
Anne Waldman is a living legend. Poet, performer, professor, editor, cultural activist, grandmother, and co-founder with Allen Ginsberg of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Former director of the Poetry Project. Tireless author of over 40 books, her trademark energy coils ever outward, always seeking to reveal the four-fold vision that we have largely lost.
Sam Sax
Sam Sax is a queer, Jewish writer and educator. Their most recent book is the debut novel, Yr Dead (McSweeney’s, 2024), longlisted for a National Book Award in Fiction, and called “profoundly original” by Kirkus Review in a starred review. Their most recent book of poems is Pig (Simon & Schuster, 2023), which was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Poetry. They’re the author of Madness, winner of the National Poetry Series, and Bury It, winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets.
Andrew Whiteman
Andrew Whiteman is a musician and mythopoetics scholar from Montreal, Canada. He writes and performs in Broken Social Scene, Apostle of Hustle, AroarA, and Poets’ Workout Sound System. He is a co-founder of Siren Recordings.
At the New York City Poetry Festival, it’s all poetry to us.
What is poetry, really? Words on a page? Clowns in colorful socks? Accordion music? Parasols? Nature? Abandoned buildings? A solar-powered merry-go-round? These are simply a few of the magical, poetic experiences you will encounter.
Why do people love the New York City Poetry Festival? See for your yourself.
“On Governor’s Island, poetry is alive and it is for everyone.”
“It’s amazing an event so profoundly transformative exists at all AND it’s free. I love taking the ferry out to that tiny island of poetry each summer.”
“I spotted a disproportionate number of urbanites with straw hats tilted on their heads in a suspiciously jaunty manner. ”
Join us and get to know The Poetry Society of New York!
The Poetry Society of New York has a simple mission: to redefine poetry’s place in our culture through a growing portfolio of innovative experiments and experiences.