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“Long ago, I was wounded.” Actor and playwright Eisa Davis reads Louise Glück’s poem “First Memory” in this short film directed by Matthew Thompson and produced by the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation for their Read By poetry film series.
“if you can read this / you are alive.” erica lewis reads her poem “i’m no great pretender,” which appears in her collection mahogany (Wesleyan University Press, 2023), in this poetry film produced by City Lights Booksellers & Publishers with the author.
“Praise your capacity for birth / fluid currents and trenchant darkness.” In this short film directed by Justyn Ah Chong, poet Craig Santos Perez reads “Praise Song for Oceania,” which appears in his collection Habitat Threshold (Omnidawn, 2020). Perez’s latest collection, from unincorporated territory [lukao] (Omnidawn, 2023), the fourth in an ongoing series about his homeland of the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam), won the National Book Award in poetry.
“A book can change your life, and I know because I had that happen to me.” Award-winning author Tobias Wolff talks about his childhood, education, writing life, and his novel Old School (Vintage, 2003) in this short film directed by Lawrence Bridges for the National Endowment for the Arts’ “Big Read” initiative. For more from Wolff, read this profile by Joe Woodward published in the March/April 2008 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Watch the trailer for the film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s short story “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” a short film directed by Wes Anderson. The Netlfix film stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel, and Ben Kingsley.
“Metaphors get under your skin by ghosting right past the logical mind.” In this animated TED-Ed video, poet Jane Hirshfield discusses the art and use of metaphors in our daily lives and in the works of Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and Carl Sandburg.
“I’m no moaning bluet, mountable / linnet, mumbling nun. I’m / tangible, I’m gin. Able to molt / in toto, to limn.” In this short film, Paisley Rekdal, who served as the Utah state poet laureate from 2017 to 2022, recites her poem “Self-Portrait as Mae West Anagram” for the Utah Division of Arts and Museums.
“Much like his life, Neruda’s poems bridged romance and revolution by emphasizing the everyday moments worth fighting for.” Author Ilan Stavans narrates this TED-Ed animated film about the life and poetry of Pablo Neruda, directed by Ivana Bosnjak and Thomas Johnson.
“I no longer want to do this thing of speaking for the voiceless, it’s about passing the microphone and allowing those people to finally speak for themselves.” In this video produced by the Guardian Labs, author and spoken word artist Pages Matam talks about the power of poetry and creating spaces where shared experiences can act as both inspiration and a catalyst for change.
“Poetry is the way of experiencing the world outside of the everyday commercial expectations that are made of us.” Poet and professor Roberto Tejada, author most recently of Why the Assembly Disbanded (Fordham University Press, 2022), reads from his work and discusses his teaching and writing practice in this Texas Monthly video directed by Chris Beier.
