At Princeton, there are unparalled opportunities to write, study, or simply enjoy poetry. You can hang out in the Writer’s Studio above iconic Blair Arch, discussing literature late into the night. You can take a workshop with Pulitzer-prize winning poets like Tracy K. Smith or Paul Muldoon. In the English department, you can study with scholars and working poets such as Susan Stewart and Jeff Dolven. You can join the Nassau Literary Review or the Ellipses Slam team. Nearly every day of the week, you can attend a poetry reading or a lecture about poetry on campus, and every other spring, the Princeton Poetry Festival brings a slate of world-renowned writers to your doorstep.

“I am impressed every semester by the caliber of the students and professors,” says one junior who has studied with four poetry professors. “It is really the union of effective professors and challenging and gifted students that makes the poetry workshop effective.”

You can read more about Princeton’s poetry program here. You can also hear from several Princeton poets and professors in the following video clip. 

One Princeton student writes about her experience with poetry on campus: 

“During my first two years at Princeton, I wrote a few poems, but mainly focused on academics and community service. My junior year, everything changed. I met beautiful, talented peers who shared my passion for words. They wanted to form a poetry group called “Ellipses” and I joined in a heartbeat. We met weekly (in a cozy room at Spelman, an upperclass dormitory) to share our poems and offer each other feedback…”

You can read the rest of Jenesis’ story here. You can also watch another undergraduate slam poet, Aisha, perform in the following video: 

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Banner image from COLORS by Tom Sachs