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In this video, fourteen Black poets from ten different countries read in multiple languages and in translation for this 2024 Furious Flower Poetry Center virtual event hosted by Gbenga Adesina, who is featured in “New Ways of Seeing: Our Twenty-First Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“i repeated & scribbled until it picked its way & stagnated somewhere i can’t point to / anymore, maybe my gut— // maybe there in-between my pancreas & large intestine is the piddly brook of my soul.” In “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs” by Renée Nicole Good, a poet and mother who was fatally shot by an ICE agent earlier this month, the speaker contemplates a struggle between science and faith. Good won a 2020 prize from the Academy of American Poets for the poem, and guest judge Rajiv Mohabir spoke about what resonates with him in a recent Newsweek article: “What does it mean to define something until there is no wonder left? The poem asks me. The speaker in the poem has no answers, just experiences that illuminate the tensions that arise when trying to reconcile wonder against brutality.” Write a poem that is situated between the opposing tensions of wonder and brutality. Is there a point at which definition and description are overwhelming?
“Advice for poets should be poems.” —Bianca Stone, author of The Near and Distant World
The author of Cord Swell (Norton, 2025) considers how memory can be mined for particular phrases and pronunciations to guide poetry.
Colosseum Books, Wiseblood Books, The Colosseum
Casper, who has worked at a number of literary arts organizations over the last twenty-five years, most recently as head of Poetry and Literature in the Literary Initiatives Office at the Library of Congress, will start in his new role on January 26.
Catchy lyrics are often the reason popular songs get stuck in our heads, although sometimes the lyrics take on a life of their own. John Cougar Mellencamp’s 1982 hit song “Jack & Diane,” a “little ditty” about a young American couple, includes the line, “Suckin’ on a chili dog outside the Tastee-Freez,” a striking description of a scene that has inspired multiple comedic covers of the song in which the chili dog phrase is repeated over and over. Jot down a list of phrases from songs that have gotten stuck in your head, perhaps because of a certain oddness or seemingly nonsensical nature paired with evocative imagery. Write a poem that begins with the lyric, allowing associations and context from the song to mingle with what your personal memories bring to the words.
In this reading celebrating the annual Poets House Showcase exhibition, Hala Alyan reads from The Moon That Turns You Back (Ecco, 2024), Cynthia Cruz reads from Sweet Repetition (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Carl Phillips reads from Scattered Snows, to the North (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024), and Rowan Ricardo Phillips reads from Silver (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024).
“may the tide / that is entering even now / the lip of our understanding / carry you out / beyond the face of fear…” Here’s a poem to help welcome in the new year: Elizabeth Acevedo reads “blessing the boats” by Lucille Clifton in this 2021 installment of the Ours Poetica series, sponsored by Complexly and the Poetry Foundation.
Tehching Hsieh: Lifeworks 1978–1999, currently on view at Dia Beacon in New York’s Hudson Valley, is the first U.S. retrospective covering the Taiwanese conceptual artist’s performance works. Each of his projects, which last an entire year, pushes at the boundaries between life and art: 365 days spent locked in a wooden cage, or living on the streets of New York City, or punching in on a time clock every hour on the hour in his studio, or tethering himself with a rope to another artist. “My art is doing time, so it’s not different from doing life or doing art, or doing time. No matter whether I stay in ‘art-time’ or ‘life-time,’ I am passing time,” Hsieh said in a 2019 interview for the Believer. How is the passing of time connected to your sense of observation as a poet? Write a poem that reflects the distinctions or similarities between your “art-time” and “life-time.”
