Theater video tags: 2021

Devon Walker-Figueroa Reads “Noise Cancelling”

Caption: 

“To think I’ve gone / to all this trouble / just to lose / my looks & mind.” In this Poetry Society of America video, Devon Walker-Figueroa reads her poem “Noise Cancelling,” which was selected by Amit Majmudar as the winner of the 2021 Lucille Medwick Memorial Award. Walker-Figueroa speaks about her debut collection, Philomath (Milkweed Editions, 2021), in “A Freeing Space: Our Seventeenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Genre: 

Remembering bell hooks

Caption: 

“There’s so many young people, the first time they start to think seriously about class, about sexuality, about gender, about identity, about vulnerability, about spirituality is through her work,” says Princeton University professor Imani Perry about the legacy of bell hooks in this PBS NewsHour video commemorating the influential critic, author, and feminist scholar and activist who died at the age of sixty-nine on December 15, 2021.

Samin Nosrat Reads “Elegy” by Aracelis Girmay

Caption: 

“Listen to me. I am telling you / a true thing. This is the only kingdom.” In this installment of Ours Poetica, a series produced by the Poetry Foundation in collaboration with Complexly, chef and author of Salt Fat Acid Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking Samin Nosrat reads Aracelis Girmay’s poem “Elegy.”

Genre: 

Graywolf Press Celebrates Natalie Diaz

Caption: 

“I don’t call it sleep anymore. / I’ll risk losing something new instead,” reads Natalie Diaz from her poem “From the Desire Field” in this Graywolf Press virtual event celebrating her collection Postcolonial Love Poem, for which she won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in poetry.

Genre: 

Abdulrazak Gurnah’s 2021 Nobel Prize Lecture

Caption: 

“Writing has always been a pleasure. Even as a boy at school I looked forward to the class set aside for writing a story,” reads Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, from his lecture titled “Writing,” in which he discusses his earliest memories of reading and writing, as well as how his observations of colonization and immigration influenced his desire to write.

Genre: 

Yassin Adnan on Hot Maroc

Caption: 

“When you start writing, you start from your own readings.” Moroccan author Yassin Adnan speaks about how writing begins with reading and discusses the seeds of his first novel, Hot Maroc (Syracuse University Press, 2021,) in this virtual event with translator Alexander E. Elinson and author Laila Lalami, hosted by Elliott Bay Book Company.

Jason Reynolds on Young People’s Literature

Caption: 

Jason Reynolds speaks about his appointment by the Library of Congress as the seventh National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, the importance of young readers, and the danger of banning books in this interview on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

Genre: 

J. Jennifer Espinoza Reads “My Trans Body”

Caption: 

“I pick up the phone and send you some words / about my trans body,” reads J. Jennifer Espinoza from her poem “My Trans Body,” included in her collection Outside of the Body There Is Something Like Hope (Big Lucks, 2018), in this installment of Ours Poetica, a video series produced by the Poetry Foundation in collaboration with Complexly.

Genre: 

Pages

Subscribe to 2021