The Ezra Pound Society was founded by Prof. Carroll F. Terrell at the University of Maine in 1979. The hub of the society was Paideuma, a scholarly journal founded by Terrell in 1972 belonging to the National Poetry Foundation, an organization Terrell founded in the same year.

In 1999 the society was taken over and managed by Burt Hatlen, his younger colleague at the same university until 2008. Hatlen rewrote the society rules and regulations. He also decided to reorient Paideuma from a journal dedicated to Pound studies to one surveying the field of modernism as a whole.

Between 2008 and 2013 the society was run by friendly cooperation of scholars from USA and Canada: Alec Marsh (President) and Demetres Tryphonopoulos (Secretary

The society won its affiliations to the main American professional organisations such as the Modern Language Association and the American Literature Association in 1993 and has organised panels at the conferences of these organisations ever since.

In 1999 it started awarding a book prize for the best monograph on Ezra Pound published in English.

In 2013 Roxana Preda became president and effected a major restructuring of the society: she rewrote the regulations, launched the present society website, and started a quarterly digital magazine on Ezra Pound.

In 2014 the society started a prize for best article in Pound studies. The prize was awarded until 2018.

In February 2015, Make It New, the society quarterly, received its own dedicated website.

Two new society projects were launched:

The Ezra Pound English Language Bibliography, a collaboration between Archie Henderson and Roxana Preda. This work is current.

The electronic Ezra Pound's Poetry & Prose, Contributions to Periodicals, a project carried out 2015-1018. At present members can access the materials after logging in.

In 2018, Prof. Mark Byron, University of Sydney, took over as president of the society. 

Last updated: 25 April 2022