Welcome to Brothel Books

Brothel Books, The Poetry Society of New York’s newest imprint, is a small book publisher based in New York City.  The Poetry Brothel has long been a proponent of bringing poetry to the masses–exclusively, and with absolute discretion. Likewise, The Poetry Brothel’s publishing arm, Brothel Books, publishes the most intimate, most charming, and most crafted works being produced today, primarily by The Poetry Brothel’s poets across the globe, but also the general public.

Editors

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it - Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it -  Co-Editor-in-Chief

History

The Poetry Society of New York first emerged under the guise of The Poetry Brothel at The Living Theater in early 2007. The Poetry Brothel was a performance art event aimed at fostering intimacy, urgency and exaltation within the New York poetry community, and at expanding that community to include a more diverse population of artists. At that time New York City, the place perceived by thousands of young writers to be the epicenter of the contemporary poetry world, felt boring. Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara and Edna St. Vincent Millay had quit running amok decades earlier, and a clear vitalizing alternative was required. The Brothel provided one cure: a pastiche of back-alley history and literary revelry, The Poetry Brothel remedied the monotony of the slam poetry reading’s endless bravado, and charmed patrons of the one-note, one-format academic poetry readings out of their fold-up chairs into back rooms for private readings.

But it wasn’t enough. The Poetry Brothel bridged difficult social and sociological gaps between individuals, but soon, The Poetry Brothel’s founders, Stephanie Berger and Nicholas Adamski, felt the need to cross literal borders. They created The Translation Project in the hopes of opening the lines of communication between New York poets and poets living abroad, but in order to get funding for such a project, it was time to get legal and form business entity. When the state of New York rejected the business name “The Poetry Brothel,” citing it as “lewd and illegal,” Berger and Adamski requested “The Poetry Society of New York,” and much to their surprise, they got it. Since forming The Poetry Society of New York, they have produced the New York Poetry Festival, Quartier Rouge, Brothel Books, and this website with several future projects in the works.