Poetry in America, created and directed by Harvard professor Elisa New, is a public television series and multi-platform educational initiative that brings poetry into classrooms and living rooms around the world.

In partnership with Harvard, Poetry in America offers free online courses for global learners as well as for-credit and professional development courses for undergraduates, graduate students, highly motivated high-school students, and educational practitioners. Its public television series Poetry in America (presented by WGBH Boston and distributed by American Public Television) first aired nationwide in April 2018. Poetry in America returned for a second season in April 2020, and is airing on public television stations in most major markets across the US.

Poetry in America is filmed on location in a rich documentary style. From our base in Cambridge, we follow Allen Ginsberg to San Francisco, Gwendolyn Brooks to the South Side of Chicago, and Emily Dickinson to Amherst. Along the way, scientists and Supreme Court justices, playwrights and journalists, athletes and songwriters, poets and painters, and classroom teachers and their students join us to reflect on essential works of the American literary imagination.

Dozens of guest interpreters join the conversation– they include:

Joe Biden | Shaquille O’Neal | Gloria Estefan | | Nas | Elena Kagan | Herbie Hancock | Sonia Sanchez | John McCain | Bill Clinton | Katie Couric | Tony Kushner | Tracy K. Smith | Bono | Caroline Kennedy | Al Gore | Julia Alvarez | John Kerry | Frank Gehry | LisaGay Hamilton | Henry Louis Gates Jr. | Michael Pollan | Raúl Esparza | Evie Shockley | John Lithgow | Natalia Zukerman | Robert Pinsky | Cynthia Nixon | Regina Spektor | Joshua Bennett | Maxine Hong Kingston | Yusef Komunyakaa | Richard Dawkins | James Fallows | David Strathairn | Linda Hogan | Yo-Yo Ma … and many more

Poetry in America is a production of Verse Video Education, a not-for-profit organization that produces the highest quality educational media across disciplines.