In 1989, Creative Time presented “Poets in Bars”, a series of poetry readings held at various bars throughout New York City. It was an opportunity to celebrate the rich history of oral tradition in the city and bring poetry performances to a wide array of public spaces. The project included some of the most prominent poets of the last 50 years, such as Miguel Algarin (co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café), Ntozake Shange, Lois Elaine Griffith, Amiri Baraka, Eileen Myles, Jayne Cortez, Jessica Hagedorn and Allen Ginsberg, among others.

To celebrate Creative Time’s 50th anniversary, we are reflecting on the impact of “Poets in Bars” and continuing the tradition of amplifying poetic voices. Join acclaimed poets Sahar Khraibani, Francisco Márquez, Megan Pinto, and Kamelya Omayma Youssef, and poet-moderator Jimin Seo, as they read, respond to, and explore the continuing legacies of the poet in New York.

What does it mean to be a poet in New York City? By birth or migration, “poet in New York” is as much its own mythology as the city itself. If the writing of poetry is a private documenting of the self, the city forces an encounter. Historical calamities: war, poverty, racism, genocide, become inevitably the poet’s feed loop. It is the life of the poet, where private and public merge in the guise of art, resisting the humiliating public conditions made private in our ever-mechanizing world. Still, in that resistance are the living joys of a poet in New York. The emergence of a community within their civil causes, and the communal joys of building a renewing world, both private and public.

Sahar Khraibani is a writer and artist whose writing has appeared in Montez Press, The Brooklyn Rail, Magnum Foundation, the Poetry Foundation, the Poetry Project, and Hyperallergic, among others. Sahar is a recipient of the Creative Capital / Andy Warhol Arts Writers Grant, an ESB Fellowship at The Poetry Project, and a MacDowell Fellowship. Sahar teaches at Pratt Institute and Brooklyn College, and is a Critical Studies Fellow in the Whitney Independent Studies Program. Their poetry collection is forthcoming with 1080Press.

Francisco Márquez is a poet from Maracaibo, Venezuela, born in Miami, Florida. His work can be found in The Brooklyn Rail, Narrative, The Yale Review, and The Slowdown podcast, among other publications. His work has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Tin House, The Poetry Project, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. A graduate of the NYU Creative Writing program, he lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Megan Pinto is the author of Saints of Little Faith (Four Way Books, 2024). Her writing can be found or is forthcoming in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Ploughshares, Lit Hub, Poetry Society of America and elsewhere. Megan has received scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ conference, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, Storyknife and Poets & Writers. She lives in Brooklyn.

Jimin Seo, born in Seoul, Korea immigrated to the US at the age of eight. His books include OSSIA (Changes 2024), and the chapbook A – 1982. His most recent projects were Poems of Consumption with H. Sinno at the Barbican Centre in London, and a site activation for salazarsequeromedina’s Open Pavilion at the 4th Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism.

Kamelya Omayma Youssef, author of A book with a hole in it (Wendy’s Subway, 2022), is a text and performance worker who teaches, edits, and organizes events. Her work is published by 1080Press, Mizna, Sukoon, The Margins, Poem-a-Day and elsewhere. She and you will see a free Palestine in this lifetime.