Ten Questions for July Westhale
“And while it is an expansive, strange book, it manages to feel contained and possible. I think that’s in part because it was written from a place of confinement.” —July Westhale, author of moon moon
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Genre: Poetry
Poetry Night Panel: Brandel France de Bravo and Julie Choffel
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In this Poetry Night Panel event at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C., Brandel France de Bravo, author of Locomotive Cathedral (The Backwaters Press, 2025), and Julie Choffel, author of Dear Wallace (The Backwaters Press, 2024), read a selection of poems and join María Fernanda for a conversation about how literature helps one grapple with the challenges of life.
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Hope as Home
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“Are those who don’t know history only doomed to resell it at a higher price?” In this short film directed by Jasmine Ogunjimi, award-winning slam poet Pages Matam reads their poem “Hope as Home.” The film was produced by Da Poetry Lounge Co. and executive produced by HOPE, Inc., an organization that provides support for those experiencing housing discrimination.
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Lies and Nightingales
Diane Seuss’s poem “Romantic Poet,” which appears in her collection Modern Poetry (Graywolf Press, 2024), is a reference to John Keats and his famous poem “Ode to a Nightingale.” Seuss writes: “You would not have loved him, / my friend the scholar / decried. He brushed his teeth, / if at all, with salt. He lied, / and rarely washed / his hair.” This week write a poem about someone or something you love that takes inspiration from Seuss’s poem and the ways in which her verse spans the universe of mundane actions and the sublime. Consider how to apportion the profane and the profound with alternations. How can the rhythm, pacing, and sound of your lines introduce a tension between what you love and the reality of what you love?
Singularity by Marie Howe
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“Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity / we once were?” Marie Howe, who won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, reads her poem “Singularity” in this short film directed by Matthew Thompson and produced by the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation for their Read By poetry film series.
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Cathy Linh Che: Becoming Ghost
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In this Books Are Magic event, Cathy Linh Che reads from her second poetry collection, Becoming Ghost (Washington Square Press, 2025), and talks about how her parents’ experience as extras in Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now shaped her book in a conversation with poet Wo Chan.
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Sensational Statements
In the New York Times, a recent headline reads: “Universal Antivenom May Grow Out of Man Who Let Snakes Bite Him 200 Times.” Without reading the content of the article, where does this sensational statement take your mind? This could be an act of heroism, foolishness, a desperate cry for attention, or simply one of the many bizarre idiosyncrasies of human behavior. This week, scroll and scan through a range of headlines—whether seemingly legitimate or dubious—and pick a particularly strange one. Before reading the article, write a poem that follows your line of thinking upon seeing this striking bit of reportage. Think about where the story might go and what images are evoked. Are you able to draw a personal connection to aspects of your own behavior that might explain why the headline resonated with you?
Ten Questions for Lisa Fishman
“The magnitude of space around me must have opened a kind of interior spaciousness where the writing came from.” —Lisa Fishman, author of One Big Time
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P&W Live: Douglas Kearney in Conversation With Destiny O. Birdsong
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In this Poets & Writers Live event introduced by Poets & Writers Magazine features editor India Lena González, Douglas Kearney reads from his new poetry collection, I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always (Wave Books, 2025), and joins Poets & Writers Magazine contributing editor Destiny O. Birdsong for a conversation. A profile of Kearney by Birdsong appears in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
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Poetry Is Always in Season: A Conversation With the Anonymous Curator Behind @poetryisnotaluxury
The person behind the viral Instagram account @poetryisnotaluxury talks about their approach to selecting poetry for a digital platform versus a print anthology, the value of anonymity, and more.
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