Funding the Poets: PW Talks with Elizabeth Alexander

This year, the Mellon Foundation provided $2.2 million in funding to the Academy of American PoetsThe website of the wonderful Academy, which was founded in 1934 to support American poets at all stages of their careers and to foster the appreciation of contemporary poetry. Any poet or poetry lover would find it worth a visit., which is using the money to further the work of the Poetry Coalition and to grant fellowships to poets laureate across the U.S. The funding, the Academy said, was the largest sum of its kind provided to poets in the U.S. at any one time by a charitable organization. (The largest single donation ever made to an institution dedicated to poetry, Ruth Lilly's $100 million bequest to Poetry magazine in 2002, remains the largest provided in the service of poetry, but did not directly impact poets on an individual basis.) PW spoke with poet Elizabeth Alexander, the former chair of the African-American studies department at Yale University who has served as president of the Mellon Foundation since last July, about the Foundation's decision to fund poets, how the money is being spent, and more.