The Poet’s Press was founded in New York City in 1971, as part of the last great Bohemia of Greenwich Village, with the mission of publishing neglected or lesser-known poets. In those days a number of deserving poets, despite having many magazine appearances, had no book publications. Brett Rutherford sought to publish affordable chapbooks and books for poets, and The Poet’s Press quickly emerged as an important part of the New York poetry scene. Working out of a loft in the “cast-iron” district of Chelsea, The Poet’s Press printed and bound its own books with a small offset press and a variety of binding equipment. The press hosted readings at the loft, and Rutherford and the circle of poets he published were a vital part of the West Village poetry scene. Distinct from the more avant-garde East Side poets, the poets chosen by the press, although almost all wrote in free verse, were more traditional in centering on coherent narrative and connections to historical content or classic literature. With the publication of the 1975 anthology May Eve: A Festival of Supernatural Poetry, the press started a second imprint, Grim Reaper Books, later used for a number of Gothic and supernatural titles. The writings of Brett Rutherford, Barbara A. Holland, Shirley Powell, and some other contemporaries indeed constituted an informal “New York Gothic” movement.

In the last several years, after relocating to Pittsburgh, press founder Rutherford has turned his attention to a wider swath of world literature, producing, by his own and others’ hands, studies, translations and adaptations involving Ovid, the Chinese Emperor Li Yu, Greek poets Callimachus and Meleager, Rainer Maria Rilke, Phillis Wheatley, World War I literature, Victor Hugo, and Heine’s satirical poems. Forays into essays, fiction, and memoir have included volumes of Continental horror stories, a banned anti-war novel from World War I, the literary essays of Rhode Island writer Sarah Helen Whitman, a collection of Silver Age Russian fiction, and Boria Sax’s memoir of atomic espionage. Some of these books appear under the press’s third imprint, Yogh and Thorn Books.

The press passed its 50th anniversary in 2021, and has now published poems and writings by more than 500 authors.

https://www.poetspress.org