About

World Poetry is a nonprofit publisher of poetry in translation, founded in 2017 and based in New York City. We publish from a broad range of languages and traditions, bringing the work of modern masters, emerging voices, and pioneering innovators from around the world to English-language readers in affordable, high-quality trade editions. Our titles are usually published in facing-page, bilingual formats, most are new translations, and many signal an author’s first significant publication in English.

Our books have been reviewed and excerpted widely—in The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Publishers Weekly, LRB, The TLS, Asymptote, LARB, and LitHub, among many others—and several have received awards, including the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.

As our mission includes the promotion of translators, we offer fair contracts with fees and royalties, and the translators of our books receive a wealth of editorial feedback as well as support for public speaking engagements, magazine publication, and media attention. Every effort is made for the translators’ work to reach a broad audience that includes scholars and students as well as the general readership. We take special care to support the work of emerging translators and many of our titles are translators’ first book-length publications.

Since 2022, World Poetry has presented the event series Colloquy: Translators in Conversation, providing a forum for translators to engage with live audiences in an exploration of the art of translation, with four to six events per year presented in collaboration with New York City institutions and independent bookstores. (For more information click on the Colloquy link in the footer.)

In partnership with the Humanities Institute and the Translation Program at the University of Connecticut (Storrs), World Poetry provides publishing internships, master classes, translation awards, and summer research grants for UConn students, and supports the Translation Program’s online magazine, World Poetry Review.

As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and registered New York State charity, we happily accept tax-deductible donations. Please see the Support page for more information and a list of our grantors and donors.