The poetry of every age, free

Thousands of poems have left private hands and never been read again. Strofia gathers them, orders them and gives them back — and keeps the door open for whoever is writing today.

Enter the library Write to us

Hombres necios que acusáis

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz(1648–1695)

Redondillas, 1689

Hombres necios que acusáisa la mujer, sin razón,sin ver que sois la ocasiónde lo mismo que culpáis;

Read the full poem

Written in seventeenth-century colonial Mexico by a Hieronymite nun who argued theology with bishops. Three hundred years on, it is still the cleanest argument anyone has written about the double standard. (Roughly: “Foolish men, quick to blame a woman without cause, blind to being yourselves the cause of the very thing you blame.”)

Public domainThis poem is in the public domain. You may read it, copy it, recite it and publish it without asking anyone.

/portfolio

What's inside

Three doors into the same thing: poems you can read, copy and share without asking anyone.

01 / 03

Poems

The catalogue, ordered by period and by theme. Every poem with its full text, its author and the book it came from — no walls, no sign-up, nothing trimmed.

02 / 03

Authors

Who wrote what, and when. From Sor Juana to Emily Dickinson, with the dates that explain why their work belongs to everyone today.

03 / 03

Workshops

Reading poetry is a skill. Sessions on metre, rhythm and image are coming, built on the poems already here.

How it works

None of this is complicated, but it is worth saying out loud.

  1. 01

    You read without an account

    The whole public-domain catalogue is open. No sign-up, no article limit, no button asking for your email halfway through a stanza.

  2. 02

    You publish your own

    If you write, Strofia gives you somewhere to host your work under your name. It stays yours: you decide what goes up, and you can take it down whenever you like.

  3. 03

    You add what's missing

    Missing a poem that is already in the public domain? Send it with its source. Once we've checked that it really is, it joins the catalogue.

  4. 04

    You learn to read it

    Workshops come after the catalogue, not before it: the poems first, then the tools for reading them better.

About rights A poem enters the public domain when its term of protection expires, which depends on the country and on the author's date of death. Strofia only publishes work whose term has clearly lapsed, or which its author has expressly given. If you believe something here shouldn't be, write to us and we'll take it down while we check.

Is a poem missing?

The public domain is vast and badly catalogued. If you know a poem that already belongs to everyone and isn't here, send it with its source: it is the fastest way for Strofia to grow.

Contribute a poem

You can also send your own work if you write.

/contact

Write to us

A correction to a text, a wrong attribution, a workshop proposal or a question about rights: it all arrives in the same place.

Email
[email protected]
MESSAGE
Your email is only used to reply to you.