Poetry Northwest was founded as a quarterly, poetry-only journal in 1959 by Errol Pritchard, with Carolyn Kizer, Richard Hugo, Edith Shiffert and Nelson Bentley as co-editors.
The first issue was 32 pages and included the work of Richmond Lattimore, May Swenson, Philip Larkin, James Wright, and William Stafford.
During the magazine's four decades, it gained an international reputation for publishing some of the best poetry by established and up-and-coming poets in the United States, Britain, and beyond including Stanley Kunitz, Thom Gunn, Philip Larkin, May Swenson, Theodore Roethke, John Berryman, Czesław Miłosz, Harold Pinter, Joyce Carol Oates, Raymond Carver, Robert Pinsky, Annie Dillard, Richard Wilbur, Jorie Graham, Michael S. Harper, James Dickey, Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry and Anne Sexton.
In 1964, Kizer became the sole editor of the magazine and would hold that post until 1966 when she resigned to become the Literature Director at the National Endowment for the Arts.
The new series resumed publication in March 2006 and immediately re-established its reputation as one of the most important and lively poetry magazines in the United States.