Poets & Writers Theater

“Poses no significant litter problem. / Ranks as ‘not particularly outstanding,’ according to the Forest Service.” At the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University, Forrest Gander reads from the opening of Casting Deep Shade (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), C. D. Wright’s posthumously published collection. The multigenre, three-panel, hardcover book is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Let us bridge the generations and remind all who will listen that it only takes one woman sitting on a bus to inspire hundreds…” Amy Uyematsu, the author most recently of Basic Vocabulary (Red Hen Press, 2016), reads her poem “As American As” at the third annual Writers Resist Los Angeles reading at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Venice, California.

“If you ask me why representation in the media is important... / I will show you a woman who learned to dance until she / felt pretty...” On NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concerts, Ashlee Haze reads her poem “For Colored Girls (The Missy Elliot Poem)” as part of Blood Orange’s performance of “By Ourselves” from the album Negro Swan.

“They taste good to her / They taste good / to her. They taste / good to her...” Rafael Campo reads William Carlos Williams’s poem “To a Poor Old Woman” and speaks with Elisa New about enjambments, plums, and empathy for Poetry in America.

“I come from the fire city / fire came and licked up our houses, lapped them up like they were nothing / drank them like the last dribbling water...” This Motionpoems short film, directed by Daniel Daly and starring Khadija Shari, features Eve L. Ewing’s poem “I come from the fire city.” from her debut collection, Electric Arches (Haymarket Books, 2017). 

“I do hope one day to be free of this body’s dry wood...” In this Button Poetry video, Kaveh Akbar, author of the poetry collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James Books, 2017), reads a poem that was published in Tin House’s “The Rehab Issue” in 2017.

“My frugal mouth spends the only foreign words it owns. / At present, on this sleeper train, there’s nowhere to arrive.” Jenny Xie, a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award in poetry, reads “Rootless” and “Ongoing” from her debut poetry collection, Eye Level (Graywolf Press, 2018). Xie is featured in “Wilder Forms: Our Fourteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this video for PBS NewsHour’s “Brief but Spectacular” series, Franny Choi reads her poem “Introduction to Quantum Theory” and discusses the importance of asking unanswerable questions and imagining alternate realities. Choi is the author of Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014) and Soft Science, which is forthcoming from Alice James Books in April.

“I want to write about tiny miracles: I woke up this morning. I woke up this morning.” George Abraham, author of the chapbook The Specimen’s Apology (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019), reads his poem “Against Consolidation” at the 2017 VOX POP Poetry Slam Tournament in Manchester, New Hampshire.

“It was easy to worship obedient things.” Mario Chard reads a selection of poems from his debut poetry collection, Land of Fire (Tupelo Press, 2018) at Litquake in 2012. Karp is featured in “Wilder Forms: Our Fourteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Dorianne Laux reads her poems “If It Weren’t for Bad Ideas, I’d Have No Ideas at All,” “Evening,” “This Close,” and “Savages” at a 2017 reading in Washington, D.C. for the Field Office. Laux’s new collection, Only as the Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems (Norton, 2019), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“We slid pride first into his car opening the new year / the way ungraceful fingers open a gift not meant for them.” William Evans reads “New Year’s Eve Party at Eric’s House and the Black Boys Have Had Enough” from his poetry collection Still Can’t Do My Daughter’s Hair (Button Poetry, 2017) at Camp Bar in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

The Kindergarten Teacher stars Maggie Gyllenhaal as an aspiring poet and elementary school teacher who discovers the talents of a five-year-old boy in her class and becomes obsessed with protecting and encouraging his writing. Gyllenhaal and director Sara Colangelo commissioned poetry from Kaveh Akbar, Dominique Townsend, and Ocean Vuong to include as verses written by the two characters.

“We live on the unanswerable, assert / that acknowledgment is inartistic, / history is regressive, and aggression / looks like no one we know…” Justin Phillip Reed reads from his debut poetry collection, Indecency (Coffee House Press, 2018), for which he won the 2018 National Book Award in poetry. Reed is featured in “Wilder Forms: Our Fourteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“That’s the moon—it’s the ghost of the sun wandering the sky at night,” says Daniel Kehlmann. In this video from Louisiana Channel, Kehlmann and fellow writers CAConrad, Georgi Gospodinov, Guadalupe Nettel, Delphine de Vigan, and Yoko Tawada discuss the moon’s mysterious presence and why writers are drawn to it as we watch visuals of the moon captured by NASA paired with Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune.”

“Poetry is a place where both grief and grace can live, where rage can be explored and examined, not simply exploited.…” In this PBS NewsHour video, Ada Limón shares her opinion on why she sees more and more people turning to poetry in the search for “radical hope” in the digital age.

“What may exist between appearance, and disappearance, between sound and silence, as something that is nearly nothing…” Diana Khoi Nguyen, a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award in poetry, reads from her debut poetry collection, Ghost Of (Omnidawn Publishing, 2018). Nguyen is featured in “Wilder Forms: Our Fourteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Your buttons can’t hold all the love / rippling up the middle of your ribcage…” José Olivarez reads his poem “You Get Fat When You’re in Love” from his debut poetry collection, Citizen Illegal (Haymarket Books, 2018). Olivarez is featured in “Wilder Forms: Our Fourteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February 2019 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Be very patient, even patient with chaos,” Lydia Davis advises writers in this compilation of interviews by Louisiana Channel. Seasoned writers from around the world, including Alaa Al Aswany, Umberto Eco, Richard Ford, Patti Smith, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, also offer their thoughts on how to keep writing.

“I’ve claimed these lives, I’ve claimed these fables, but I made them into my own.” Carly Joy Miller reads from her poetry collection, Ceremonial (Orison Books, 2018), and speaks with Lisa Grove about the use of persona in her work for this Poetry.LA interview.