Jump to navigation Skip to content
“We tend to write about things that surprise us.” In this 2011 clip from a 92Y event in New York City, Joyce Carol Oates reads from and discusses the experience of writing her memoir A Widow’s Story (Ecco, 2011) with poet and essayist Henri Cole.
“I never know what to say after someone says ‘that’s beautiful’ except to agree with them. For me, beauty is an end of conversation.” In this 2011 video for the Cortland Review, as a part of the documentary series Poets in Person, the late Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Stephen Dunn speaks about his writing practice from his home. Dunn died at the age of eighty-two on June 24, 2021.
“We in the fields, the watchers from the burnt slope, / Facing the west, facing the bright sky, hopelessly longing / to know the red beauty…” In this 2011 PBS NewsHour video, Jeffrey Yang reads William Everson’s poem “We in the Fields” along with other poems published in Birds, Beasts, and Seas: Nature Poems From New Directions, an anthology edited by the poet celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of New Directions. Yang’s new poetry collection, Line and Light (Graywolf Press, 2022), is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“My impression is that there is a much bigger audience for poetry than there was when I was young,” says the late poet John Ashbery in this 2011 interview with Belinda Luscombe for TIME Magazine on fame, poverty, art criticism, obscurity, and why he dislikes poetry readings.
In this excerpt from a short film directed by Griffin Dunne, Joan Didion reads from the second chapter of her memoir Blue Nights (Knopf, 2011). Be sure to read Kevin Nance’s moving profile of Didion from the November/December 2011 issue and listen to Kimberly Farr read a passage of the audio book.
“I do not believe that I have ever written a children’s book,” says Maurice Sendak, iconic illustrator and author of Where the Wild Things Are, in this 2011 episode of TateShots discussing his creative process, influences, and body of work.
“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.”
“I pulled down a book by Gayl Jones, Eva’s Man, and I sat down and didn’t get back up until I finished it—and I felt so haunted,” says Rachel Eliza Griffiths about what inspired her third poetry collection, Mule & Pear (New Issues Press, 2011), in this conversation at the 2013 Poets Forum for the Academy of American Poets.
“When they did the first printing of Tinkers, I immediately went through and started changing it,” says Paul Harding about writing his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, Tinkers (Bellevue Literary Press, 2009), in this 2011 interview about his writing process and learning from mentors at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
“When you’re judging a contest I’m looking for something to just knock me over, and that’s what happened when I read Natasha’s manuscript,” says Rita Dove about first encountering Natasha Trethewey’s poetry while judging a book contest. In this 2011 conversation at Emory University, the two former U.S. poets laureate discuss writing, mentorship, and literary ancestries.
