Jump to navigation Skip to content
“Poetry is a musical accident.” Fred Moten reads a selection of poems that appear in his collection The Little Edges (Wesleyan University Press, 2016) for this 2024 Silo City Reading series event with musician Brandon Lopez.
In this video from The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Amanda Gorman reads her poem “What We Carry,” which appears in her debut collection, Call Us What We Carry (Viking, 2021), set to world-renowned cellist Jan Vogler’s performance of “Suite for Violoncello No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007: I. Prélude” by Johann Sebastian Bach.
“Is it any wonder our lips feel so lonesome these long evenings?” Phil Kaye reads his poem “Summer / New York City,” which appears in his collection Date & Time (Button Poetry, 2018), in this 2021 event with accompaniment by The Westerlies at Little Island in New York City.
In this 92NY virtual reading, Lynn Melnick speaks about how Dolly Parton’s songs helped shape the structure of her memoir, I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton (University of Texas Press, 2022), in a conversation with poet Deborah Paredez.
“Writing poetry, to me, is about profound interiority. It’s about wading into the saltwater of your own body: capillaries bursting, eyes brimming, unmoored.” In this video, singer-songwriter Arlo Parks discusses her debut collection, The Magic Border: Poetry and Fragments From My Soft Machine (Dey Street Books, 2023), which features twenty poems and lyrics from her studio album My Soft Machine.
In this 1998 video from Howard County Poetry & Literature Society’s The Writing Life series, Amiri Baraka reads a selection of his poems including his first published poem, “Preface to a 20 Volume Suicide Note,” and speaks with poet E. Ethelbert Miller about his writing influences, the link between his poetry and music, and pushing against the norms.
This Schomburg Center event celebrates a half century of poetry by Quincy Troupe, who reads from his collection Duende: Poems, 1966–Now (Seven Stories Press, 2022) with the accompaniment of musicians Kelvyn Bell and Lonnie Plaxico, along with an introduction by poets Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Rashidah Ismaili, and Mervyn Taylor.
Watch the video for musician Andrew Bird’s interpretation of Emily Dickinson’s poem “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” a duet with Phoebe Bridgers included in his album Inside Problems. Of the poem, Bird says, “I came across this Emily Dickinson poem and found it to be the most vivid description of an inner world I’ve ever encountered.”
“Hip-hop is Ralph Ellison, who once said the blues is like running a razor blade along an open sore.” In this audio recording from the 1996 album Flippin’ the Script: Rap Meets Poetry released by Mouth Almighty Records, author and critic Greg Tate reads his poem “What Is Hip Hop?” The influential journalist and author of Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America (Simon & Schuster, 1992), died at the age of sixty-three on December 7, 2021.
“imagine his joy as the sun / wizarded forth those abundant sugars / and I plodded barefoot / and prayerful at the first ripe plum’s swell and blush,” reads Ross Gay from his poem “Burial” in this video featuring music by Mary Lattimore. The track is featured in an album called Dilate Your Heart, part of a yearlong release campaign celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of indie record label Jagjaguwar.
