Since 1931, the Woodberry Poetry Room has collected print and multimedia poetry artifacts that rival the poetry holdings of the Library of Congress. The Poetry Room is part of Harvard College Library and is located in the Lamont Library. The beautiful setting was designed by the renowned Finnish architect Alvar Aalto.
Visitors will find a fantastic catalog of audio and video recording along with monographs, serials, broadsides, manuscript material, and staggering array of books. In fact, forty years of original audio recordings from the Academy of American Poets are preserved and maintained by the Woodberry Poetry Room.
The Poetry Room is open to all adult researchers, regardless of academic affiliation. The WPR also offers an annual Creative Fellowship to a writer, artist, or scholar each year who would make use of the contents of the library in their work. The library operates on an academic schedule and keeps abbreviated hours between semesters. The Poetry Room’s reading series, to which the public is invited free of charge, presents some of contemporary poetry’s most influential authors during the fall and spring. More details on the WPR Creative Fellowship, along with directions and a current schedule, are available on the Woodberry Poetry Room website.