Kyle Dacuyan


Kyle Dacuyan is an American poet, performer, and previously served as Executive Director of The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York City from 2018 to 2024. Dacuyan's debut collection, Incitements, was published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2022/2023 and his poems has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Lambda Literary, The Offing, Social Text, amongst other places. His work and writing engages the intersections of labour, language, embodiment, and value.

Early life and education

Dacuyan was born and raised in Sterling, Virginia.
The poet earned a B.A. from Brown University and an M.F.A. in Poetry from Emerson College, where he received the Academy of American Poets Prize and served as Poetry Editor of Redivider.

Work

Dacuyan began publishing poems in journals such as The Brooklyn Rail, Lambda Literary, and Social Text while completing his M.F.A. at Emerson College.
He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2017 and participated in the Emerging Poets Fellowship at Poets House. Previously, he attended the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Vermont Studio Center.
In 2018, he was appointed Executive Director of The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York City, succeeding Stacy Szymaszek. During his six-year tenure, he expanded the organization’s programming and emphasized accessibility, mutual care, and cross-disciplinary performance.
In 2018–2019, Dacuyan initiated new series highlighting poets of color and experimental performance, oversaw the launch of the Lisa Brannan Prize for emerging writers, and expanded the Project’s online archive of recordings and newsletters. He focused expansion on what has been described as “poetry as a space of shared resource,” developing workshops and readings that foregrounded labour and the civic life of poetry in a city where artists and workers alike face mounting pressure from gentrification and unaffordable rents.
Through 2019–2020, he led the Project’s programming in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 racial-justice uprisings. Under his direction, the Project provided sanctuary space at St. Mark’s for protestors, hosted digital readings and workshops addressing abolitionist and mutual-aid frameworks, and published special tributes to poets such as Michael McClure and Etel Adnan.
Later that year, he collaborated with Andalyn Young and the Antigravity Performance Project on Legal Tender. The piece was first staged at Ars Nova in New York City. It was later presented at FringeArts in Philadelphia in 2020.
From 2021 onward, Dacuyan oversaw hybrid programming combining in-person and digital events, including residencies for poets in exile and collaborations with international collectives such as PavPu. His “Letter from the Executive Director” columns regularly examined questions of labour, value, and community in literary production. During this period he also completed his first book, Incitements, and began presenting performance works such as Legal Tender and Dad Rock.
He stepped down from his role at The Poetry Project in 2024. His leadership has been noted for sustaining one of New York’s longest-running independent literary institutions through a period of crisis while advancing its commitments to social justice and experimental art practice.
In 2024, Dacuyan debuted a new work titled Dad Rock at The Shed in New York City.

Major works

His debut collection, Incitements, draws attention to pleasure and embodiment as modes of counter-possibility, asking how labour and profit shape civic life, language, and the self.

Themes and style

Dacuyan’s work criss-crosses the boundary between art and labour, treating everyday language and job-related vocabulary as poetic material.

Awards and honours