It was formed from Poetry magazine, which it continues to publish, with a 2003 gift of $200 million from philanthropist Ruth Lilly.

[3] Poets who have blogged at Harriet on behalf of The Poetry Foundation include Christian Bök, Stephanie Burt, Wanda Coleman, Kwame Dawes, Linh Dinh, Camille Dungy, Annie Finch, Forrest Gander, Rigoberto González, Cathy Park Hong, Bhanu Kapil, Ange Mlinko, Eileen Myles, Craig Santos Perez, A. E. Stallings, Edwin Torres, and Patricia Smith.

Before announcing the gift, the magazine waited a year and reconfigured its governing board, which had been concerned with fundraising.

[5] The new board used a recruiting agency to find John Barr, a former executive and published poet, to head the foundation.

[5] Robert Polito, the poet and critic who founded and directed the graduate writing program at the New School, succeeded Barr in 2013 and served until 2015.

The grants program is part of the Foundation's commitment to more robustly support the field of poetry and the literary arts in ways that are both more equitable and transparent.

In addition to the reading room, there are listening booths for poet audio recordings and broadcasts related to poetry and interactive displays.

The Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships are awarded to five aspiring U.S. poets to support study and writing.

Poets, scholars, educators and others are invited to share ideas about the intellectual and practical needs of the poetry form, and to generate solutions to benefit the art.