Poets & Writers Theater

“Poetry is our essential language, and it is as essential to me as breathing.” In this Library of Congress event, Arthur Sze accepts the 2024 Rebekah Bobbitt Johnson National Prize for Poetry for Lifetime Achievement, reads several poems from his career, and talks about his formal exploration of poetics in a conversation with Rob Casper.

In this 2024 Asian American Literature Festival event, hosts Cathy Song and Misty-Lynn Sanico introduce a reading from Bamboo Ridge Press authors Donald Carreira Ching, Scott Kikkawa, Wing Tek Lum, and Tamara Wong-Morrison.

In this Green Apple Books event, Kinsale Drake reads from her debut poetry collection, The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket (University of Georgia Press, 2024), and discusses how Indigenous heritage, nature, pop culture, and other influences shaped many of her poems.
 

“Time can but make it easier to be wise / Though now it seems impossible, and so / All that you need is patience.” In this Poetry Hour series reading from the Josephine Hart Poetry Foundation, actor Jeremy Irons reads “The Folly Of Being Comforted” by W. B. Yeats.

Patrick Rosal reads Paul Genega’s poem “Aliens” in this short film directed by Williams Rossa Cole and produced by the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation, in collaboration with the Academy of American Poets, for their Read By poetry film series.

In this virtual reading from the Well Versed series hosted by StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, and Open Book, Pádraig Ó Tuama reads from his collection Feed the Beast (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) and discusses the themes of place and nature within his poems. Ó Tuama’s fourth poetry collection, Kitchen Hymns (Copper Canyon Press, 2025), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It is the Glad Season / Thunder ebbs to silence and lightning sleeps quietly in the corner.” At the annual White House Christmas celebration in 2005, the late Maya Angelou reads a poem written for the holiday and in the spirit of peace.

In this 2015 Page Meets Stage event, Aziza Barnes reads “a good deed is done for no good reason,” which appears in their debut poetry collection, i be, but i ain’t (YesYes Books, 2016). “You allow yourself to become whatever these hands will make you,” writes Barnes. The award-winning poet and playwright died at the age of thirty-two on December 15, 2024.

In this OR Books Live on Avenue C event, Mosab Abu Toha reads “If I Must Die” by the late Refaat Alareer, which appears in his posthumously published collection of poetry and prose, If I Must Die (OR Books, 2024).

In this Grolier Poetry Book Shop reading, Darius Atefat-Peckham reads from his debut collection, Book of Kin (Autumn House Press, 2024), and Raisa Tolchinsky reads from her debut collection, Glass Jaw (Persea Books, 2024). Atefat-Peckham is featured in “The Luminous Life: Our Twentieth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Brooklyn Book Festival virtual event, authors Hisham Matar, Rania Mamoun, and Omar Khalifah talk about the purpose and urgency of writing about history during times of crisis in a conversation moderated by writer and translator Yasmin Seale. Khalifah’s novel, Sand-Catcher (Coffee House Press, 2024), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this University of Arizona Poetry Center event, Saretta Morgan discusses the importance of writing amidst global crises and reads from her debut collection, Alt-Nature (Coffee House Press, 2024), after an introduction by Marianna Ariel ColesCurtis. Morgan is featured in “The Luminous Life: Our Twentieth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Live From NYPL event at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library, Emily Lee Luan reads from her collection, 回 / Return (Nightboat Books, 2023), and Jimin Seo reads from his debut collection, OSSIA (Changes Press, 2024), followed by a discussion on the poetics of grief and memory. Seo is featured in “The Luminous Life: Our Twentieth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Kenzie Allen reads from her debut poetry collection, Cloud Missives (Tin House, 2024), and talks about the themes in the book for this Left Bank Books reading with poets Tola Sylvan and Marc-Anthony Valle. Allen is featured in “The Luminous Life: Our Twentieth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this video, Nikki Giovanni reads a selection of her poems and speaks about her life and career for the Wright Conversations series hosted by the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit and PBS Books. Giovanni died at the age of eighty-one on December 9, 2024.

In this virtual reading and conversation, Poets & Writers features editor India Lena González introduces the 2024 cohort of “5 Over 50” debut authors: Suzette Mullen, author of The Only Way Through Is Out (University of Wisconsin Press, 2024); Dorsía Smith Silva, author of In Inheritance of Drowning (CavanKerry Press, 2024); Uchenna Awoke, author of The Liquid Eye of a Moon (Catapult, 2024); Parul Kapur, author of Inside the Mirror (University of Nebraska Press, 2024); and Deborah Jackson Taffa, author of Whiskey Tender (Harper, 2024).

In this Tucson Humanities Festival event held at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, scholar Jacqueline Barrios introduces Brandon Som, who reads from his Pulitzer Prize–winning poetry collection, Tripas (Georgia Review Books, 2023).

Watch the trailer for After: Poetry Destroys Silence, a cinematic performance film directed by Richard Kroehling and starring Cornelius Eady, Edward Hirsh, Melissa Leo, Géza Röhrig, and a cast of celebrated award-winning poets who respond to the Holocaust and talk about the importance and necessity for poetry in a world that still grapples with genocide.

In this 2023 Indigenous Nations Poets virtual event, fellows Kenzie Allen, Kalehua Kim, Halee Kirkwood, Mary Leauna Christensen, Erin Marie Lynch, m.s. RedCherries, and Annie Wenstrup read for their work.

“When I began translating, I found myself crying again. I knew then that I had finally found my way back to the womb.” In this event for the Center for the Art of Translation’s annual Day of Translation, cohosted at the Center for Fiction, Don Mee Choi delivers her keynote speech about writing from the “translation womb,” her attempts to comprehend and translate the Korean War, and her definition of what it means to write in the language of translation.