Since 1966, the International Poetry Forum stayed true to its mission to bring the world's best poets to Pittsburgh, but its mission is now over.

Founder and director Samuel Hazo last night announced that this, the 43rd season, will be its last, a victim of the nation's financial downturn.

"It looks like it's our last year," Dr. Hazo said following his poetry reading in Oakland last night. "The reasons are financial."

Dr. Hazo cited the forum's inability to find funding from philanthropic foundations and "without such funding, the International Poetry Forum is unable to continue."

Money from the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust launched Dr. Hazo's organization in 1966 with a reading by Archibald MacLeish, then one of America's best known poets.

It not only sponsored more than 600 poetry readings here and in Washington, D.C., but also ran the Poets-in-Person program that sent writers in schools in Allegheny and surrounding counties.

The forum was also a publisher of poetry for 10 years in partnership with the University of Pittsburgh Press and produced a series of theatrical and musical programs featuring such leading entertainers as Gregory Peck and Grace Kelly, the princess of Monaco.

Poets, though, were the forum's major contribution to the city's culture. The list of those who appeared under its aegis is a veritable who's who of the craft, including such international names as Eavan Boland, Seamus Heaney, Jerzy Kosinski and Derek Walcott.

Dr. Hazo, 80, is McAnulty Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at Duquesne University, with an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, the University of Notre Dame.

He's the author of more than two dozen books of poetry and fiction and is the only person to be Pennsylvania's state poet, serving for 10 years.

Two programs remain on the forum schedule:

April 11 -- New York City poet Ron Padgett.

May 15 -- Adam Jagajewski, one of Poland's major poets.