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In this installment of UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems series, Aracelis Girmay begins with a reading of “Poem of Commitment” by June Jordan followed by a selection of poems from her collections The Black Maria (BOA Editions, 2016) and Green of All Heads (BOA Editions, 2025).
In this 2022 event from UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems series, Jake Skeets reads a selection of poems, some of which appear in his debut collection, Eyes Bottle Dark With a Mouthful of Flowers (Milkweed Editions, 2019). A Q&A with Skeets about his second collection, Horses (Milkweed Editions, 2026), appears in the March/April 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
In this recent installment of UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems series, Sherwin Bitsui reads selected poems from his collections Flood Song (Copper Canyon Press, 2009) and Dissolve (Copper Canyon Press, 2018).
In this recent installment of UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems series, Brandon Shimoda reads a selection of poems and essays with the theme of “oranges,” which address the memory of Japanese American incarceration and war.
“The age of portrait is drugged. Beauty / is symmetry so rare it’s a mystery.” In this 2018 event, Fady Joudah reads a selection of poems from his collection Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance (Milkweed Editions, 2018) for the Lunch Poems reading series at UC Berkeley. Joudah is the recipient of the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize.
In this 2013 video, Lyn Hejinian reads from her book The Book of a Thousand Eyes (Omnidawn, 2012) for the Lunch Poem reading series at the University of California in Berkeley, where she was Professor and John F. Hotchkis Chair Emerita. Hejinian died at the age of eighty-two on February 24, 2024.
“At one time, / I asked for everything.” Sandra Lim reads from her poetry collection The Curious Thing (Norton, 2021) for this virtual reading hosted by UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems reading series with an introduction by poet Noah Warren. Lim is the recipient of the 2023 Jackson Poetry Prize.
“Have I forgotten it – / wild conch-shell dialect, / black apostrophe curled / tight on my tongue?” In this video, Safiya Sinclair reads a selection of poems from her debut collection, Cannibal (University of Nebraska Press, 2016), as well as new poems for this installment of UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems series with an introduction by poet Noah Warren.
“I don’t want to sound unreasonable / but I need to be in love immediately.” In this video, Alex Dimitrov reads a selection of poems from his collection Love and Other Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2021) for UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems reading series. “Twelve Films That Put Me in the Mood to Write” by Dimitrov appears in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“To feel signs depends on how & why / the singer’s song puckers the mouth.” Yusef Komunyakaa reads his poem “A World of Daughters,” which appears in his collection Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth: New and Selected Poems, 2001-2021 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), among other selections in this 2020 virtual reading for UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems series.
