Named one of the best reading series in NYC as well as one of the 50 best free things to do in the city by Time Out New York, the Brooklyn Poets Reading Series takes place six times a year at 144 Montague in Brooklyn Heights. Readings are free and open to the public and livestreamed via Zoom.
Each reading features three poets, with at least one from Brooklyn and one from outside the borough, pairing emerging with more established poets and focusing on those from underrepresented communities. Readings are curated by Jason Koo. For inquiries, contact us.
Born in Medellín, Colombia, danilo machado (he/they) is a poet, curator and critic living on occupied land, interested in language’s potential for revealing tenderness, erasure and relationships to power. A 2020–2021 Poetry Project Emerge-Surface-Be Fellow, they have had writing featured in Hyperallergic, Art in America, ArtCritical, Art Papers, Poem-A-Day, the Recluse, GenderFail, No, Dear, Long River Review and TAYO Literary Magazine, among others. They are the author of the collection This is your receipt and is not a ticket for travel (Faint Line Press, 2023) and the chaplets wavy in its heat and to be elsewhere (Ghost City Press Summer Series, 2022/2023). danilo is cohost of the monthly queer reading series “exquisites” (with Em Marie Kohl), as well as the chapbook/broadside fundraiser Already Felt: poems in revolt & bounty. danilo has performed at venues including Poetry Project, Bowery Poetry Club, Miriam Gallery, and Artist Alliance, among others. danilo is also the author of The Post Post Post newsletter on Substack and has contributed writing to various exhibitions including at CUE Art Foundation, Abrons Art Center/Boston Center for the Arts, Second Street Gallery, and Real Art Ways. An honors graduate of the University of Connecticut, danilo is the producer of public programs at the Brooklyn Museum and curator of the exhibitions Otherwise Obscured: Erasure in Body and Text (Franklin Street Works, Stamford, CT, 2019), support structures (Virtual/8th Floor Gallery, 2020), We turn (EFA Project Space, 2021) and Eligible/Illegible (with Francisco Donoso, PS122, 2023). They are working to show up with care for their communities.
Taije Silverman is the author of two books of poetry, most recently Now You Can Join the Others, out in 2022. Poems from the collection were selected for Best American Poetry in 2016 and 2017, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, the Anne Halley Prize for best poem in the Massachusetts Review, Poetry Daily and The Slowdown with Tracy K. Smith. Honors include a Fulbright fellowship and residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Silverman also translates from the Italian.
Mervyn Taylor, a Trinidad-born poet and longtime Brooklyn resident, has taught at Bronx Community College, the New School and in the New York City public school system. He is the author of eight books of poetry, including The Waving Gallery (2014) and Country of Warm Snow (2020), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation that was listed for the Bocas Lit Prize. A chapbook, News of the Living: Corona Poems, was published by Broadstone in 2020. Also out from Broadstone Books is a new full-length collection, The Last Train. Currently, Taylor serves as coeditor on the advisory board of Slapering Hol Press in the Hudson Valley, New York.