Poets & Writers Theater

“Instead of scanning newspaper headlines, / I spend the morning reading names / of flowers and trees in the botanical garden.” Harryette Mullen reads a selection of poems from her collection Urban Tumbleweed: Notes From a Tanka Diary (Graywolf Press, 2013) at Beyond Baroque in this Poetry.LA video.

“Some prisons taste like / salt, copper, sludge / when you bite and crunch down / to the marrow...” In this video, Cortney Lamar Charleston reads Jevon Jackson’s poem “All of Us, In Prison” at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery for a 2019 Brooklyn Book Festival event. Jackson’s poem won PEN America’s First Prize in Poetry in the 2019 Prison Writing Contest.

“I huff a tint, then flex / To hustle some hard trusts up. / I have to come with u once more.” In this 2017 Austin Public Library video, Logan Fry reads his poem “Apparatus” for National Poetry Month. Fry’s debut collection, Harpo Before the Opus, was published in October by Omnidawn.

“Bodies weren’t meant to last / but the reverb dance eternal.” Accompanied by the music of Rhythm Science Sound, poet Idris Goodwin reads “More Statues Need High Heels,” an ode to Prince, from his new collection, Can I Kick It? (Haymarket Books, 2019). The book is part of Haymarket Books’ BreakBeat Poets series, a publishing project curated by Kevin Coval and Nate Marshall that is committed to writing that “brings the aesthetic of hip-hop practice to the page.”

“What is under the earth followed them home. / The branch broke. It broke by itself. It did break, James.” In this 2014 video, Alex Dimitrov reads his poem “Together and by Ourselves” at the Radar Reading Series in San Francisco. Dimitrov and Dorothea Lasky’s Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac, an astrological guide that expands upon their popular Twitter feed, is out this week from Flatiron Books.

“I find myself on my feet with fifteen leaves. / Everything carries its own light on the walls.” In this Poetry Society of America video, poet and translator Ricardo Alberto Maldonado reads his poem “Os doy mi corazón / I Give You My Heart” at Governor’s Island in New York. Maldonado’s debut poetry collection, The Life Assignment, is forthcoming in 2020 from Four Way Books.

“Beauty’s just a bite / away from want. / I’ve seen Fox chew / off her own limb / for one more taste / of freedom.” In this 2012 video, Tiffany Midge reads from her collection The Woman Who Married a Bear (University of New Mexico Press, 2016) at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Midge’s debut memoir, Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s (Bison Books, 2019), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Brainwaves video anthology installment, Reginald Dwayne Betts reads “Essay on Reentry” from his third poetry collection, Felon, out in October from Norton. A profile of Betts by Mahogany L. Browne appears in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“the long, drunk room a darkened sanctuary. / windows blocked opaque to make day insignificant / light impaired.” In this short film, Kevin Coval reads “Ode to the Dive Bar” from his poetry collection Everything Must Go (Haymarket Books, 2019), illustrated by Langston Allston, which is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Even a baby is / a paper cut theater, / a necklace of incisions strung together / into a country.” In this Poetry.LA video, Kenji C. Liu reads poems from his collections Map of an Onion (Inlandia Institute, 2016) and Monsters I Have Been (Alice James Books, 2019) at the Writers for Migrant Justice reading in Los Angeles.

“A green like no other green / in the dale, indelicate green or / green indecent, surpassing / the fern and sprout and April’s / optimistic leaflet some stop / to admire in nature...” In this 2017 video, Timothy Donnelly reads “Diet Mountain Dew” at the Gavagai music and reading series in New York City. Donnelly’s third poetry collection, The Problem of the Many, is out today from Wave Books.

In this video, Andrea Cohen reads a selection of her poetry at the 2017 Nantucket Book Festival. Cohen, whose sixth collection, Nightshade, is out now by Four Way Books, is featured in Literary MagNet in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I’m carrying this for America, but for Indigenous peoples in particular,” says Joy Harjo about what it means to be the first Native American to serve as the poet laureate of the United States in this PBS NewsHour interview with Jeffrey Brown, which takes place in her hometown of Tulsa.

Julian Randall reads “On the Night I Consider Coming Out to My Parents” from his debut poetry collection, Refuse (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), in this Ours Poetica video produced by the Poetry Foundation in collaboration with Complexly. Randall is featured in “My MFA Experience” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Dickinson is the first web television series from Apple TV Plus, a period piece about Emily Dickinson with a modern and comedic twist starring Hailee Steinfeld. Created by Alena Smith, the cast includes Jane Krakowski as Mrs. Dickinson, Zosia Mamet as Louisa May Alcott, John Mulaney as Henry David Thoreau, and Wiz Khalifa as Death.

“The dark wood after the dark wood: the cold / after cold in April’s false November.” In this episode for the American Poem video series, Joseph Fasano travels to Alaska to meet local poets and reads Olena Kalytiak Davis’s poem “Corruptive,” as well as poems by John Haines and Mary Tallmountain.

“I wanna be / all the girls I’ve ever loved / mean girls, shy girls, loud girls, my girls, / all of us angry on our porches…” Olivia Gatwood reads poems from her debut collection, Life of the Party (Dial Press, 2019), at the Bell House in Brooklyn.

In this Academy of American Poets video, Rachel Zucker reads “Please Alice Notley Tell Me How to Be Old” from her poetry collection The Pedestrians (Wave Books, 2014) at the 2014 Poets Forum. Zucker’s tenth book, SoundMachine, is out today from Wave Books.

“Let’s be resentful about how / we didn’t have a quinceañera and forget / that we never wanted one...” In this Poetry.LA video, Sara Borjas reads “Pocha Café” from her debut collection, Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff (Noemi Press, 2019), at the Writers for Migrant Justice reading in Los Angeles.

“My heart had recently cracked // Open. Fear had departed me.” Ariana Reines reads “To the Reader” from her poetry collection, A Sand Book (Tin House Books, 2019), and talks about the origins of the book, her writing background, and the power of poetry to reach the deepest levels of human experience in this Louisiana Channel interview.