Poetry Center San José's mission is to nurture and promote diverse literary expression in our community as a means of exploring, defining, and enriching the human experience.

In furtherance of our mission, we offer programs and services to stimulate passion for the literary arts and to inspire and support emerging and established writers. We collaborate with other organizations to ensure that these programs and services reflect the diversity of our community and to involve people from a wide range of backgrounds as audience and members.

Poetry Center San José promotes and supports the literary arts in San José. Over the past four decades, PCSJ has brought hundreds of exceptional writers from around the country to read from their works and, in many cases, to conduct workshops for local writers. PCSJ is a nonprofit organization established in 1978. Its base of operations is in the charming turn-of-the-century Victorian home where the renown poet Edwin Markham once lived, now located in San José History Park. Poetry Center San José is a member supported organization and is funded, in part, by grants from Applied Materials Foundation, the City of San José's Office of Cultural Affairs, Knight Foundation, Poets & Writers, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, SVCREATES, in partnership with the County of Santa Clara and the California Arts Council and also supported in part by a SVCreates National Endowment for the Arts American Rescue Plan grant. We also thank Brandenburg Family Foundation and Anne & Mark's Art Party for their generous giving.