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“Words carry weight, lots of weight. Words can drown us, and words can save us.” Jaki Shelton Green, who was recently named North Carolina’s tenth poet laureate, reads from her poem “From Whence I Enter” at Christ School in Asheville, North Carolina. Green is the state’s first African American poet laureate.
In this 2009 interview with poet Elizabeth Spires, former U.S. poet laureate Donald Hall reads poems and speaks about the writing life. For more Hall, read “Turning Time Around: A Profile of Donald Hall” by contributor John Freeman from the November/December 2014 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. Hall passed away on June 23, 2018 at the age of eighty-nine.
Bianca Stone talks to Vermont poet laureate Chard deNiord for Poets Speak about her poetry, life with her family in Vermont, and her work restoring the house of her late grandmother, poet Ruth Stone. Bianca Stone’s third poetry collection, The Möbius Strip Club of Grief (Tin House Books, 2018), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Adrian Matejka reads “Battle Royale,” “Prize Fighter,” and other poems from his third collection, The Big Smoke (Penguin Books, 2013), which focus on the life of Jack Johnson, the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion. Matejka is the new poet laureate of Indiana, succeeding Shari Wagner.
"Let us gather and be / silent together like stones / glittering in sunlight..." Marjory Wentworth, the poet laureate of the state of South Carolina, reads "Holy City," a poem dedicated to the lives lost at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina one year ago.
"The mind must / set itself up / wherever it goes..." So begins the poem "New Rooms" by Kay Ryan from her collection, Erratic Facts (Grove Press, 2015). Ryan is a former U.S. poet laureate, Pulitzer Prize-winner, and recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" grant.
Oregon's poet laureate Peter Sears introduces his project Expanding Voices, which aims to provide more opportunities for poets in Oregon from diverse global communities to share their work and heritage.
Governor Steve Beshear last month appointed Frank X Walker to serve as Kentucky's poet laureate. Walker, who will promote the arts and lead the state in literary endeavors through readings and public presentations at meetings, seminars, conferences and events, including Kentucky Writers' Day, was formally inducted at a public ceremony and reception on April 24 in the Capitol Rotunda in Frankfort.
The next poet laureate, Philip Levine, who will succeed W. S. Merwin when he takes over the post in October, reads a selection of his poems, including "What Work Is."
