Poets & Writers Theater

“Would you agree it’s possible to be both enlightened and in the dark?” For the 2019 Blaney Lecture, an annual lecture on contemporary poetry and poetics created by the Academy of American Poets, Terrance Hayes presents “Survey of an American Century” and reflects on the last century of poetry at the Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House in New York.

“Butter lamp, incense stick, bees wax / votive, the occasion of poem, rites I enact…” In this video poem, Shin Yu Pai reimagines the traditional Wang Yeh Boat Burning Festival, a Taoist ritual, in the context of personal grief. Created in collaboration with filmmaker Scott Keva James, the short film was commissioned for the Ampersand Live showcase in Seattle. Pai is the final judge for Slippery Elm’s Deanna Tulley Multimedia Prize, which is open for submissions until September 30.

“Dawn in New York has / four columns of mire / and a hurricane of black pigeons / splashing in the putrid waters.” In this installment of the Paris Review’s Poets on Couches video series, Monica Youn reads and discusses “Dawn,” a poem by Federico García Lorca, translated by Greg Simon and Steven L. White.

Public Poetry has released five video prompts, including this one of a stone skipping across water, for their REELpoetry film contest. Submissions are open through November 2020.

“You fill the pool with cough syrup, / and the hot tub with a thousand / hollowed-out cicada shells.” Noah Falck reads “Poem Excluding Modern Technology” from his new poetry collection, Exclusions (Tupelo Press, 2020), in this video poem directed by Kyle Marler with sound by Benjamin Jura.

In this video from the Poetry Foundation’s Ours Poetica series, Megan Fernandes reads “The Edward Albee Barn” from her second poetry collection, Good Boys (Tin House Books, 2020). For more Fernandes, read her installment of Writers Recommend.

In this video, Hafizah Geter reads “Testimony (for Eric Garner)” for the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation’s Words We Share series. Geter is featured in Literary MagNet in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 2013 Woodberry Poetry Room video, Mary Ruefle reads twenty-eight short meditations from her essay collection Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures (Wave Books, 2012) with subjects including Shakespeare, Socrates, Van Morrison, the dead, hypocrisy, and loneliness. Ruefle received the 2020 Arthur Rense Poetry Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

“Say it. / That every day is a toast / to living. An ode to the way we / made resilience an art...” In this lecture for the Chautauqua Institution, Joshua Bennett reads a selection of his poems and meditates on his father’s life and the history of the spoken word tradition. Bennett speaks about his latest poetry collection, Owed (Penguin Poets, 2020), in an installment of Ten Questions.

In this video, the Root Slam, an open mic and poetry slam in Oakland, hosts an all-Black Latinx virtual reading featuring Elizabeth Acevedo, Jennifer Falú, John Murillo, Julian Randall, and Nicole Sealey to celebrate the publication of The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext (Haymarket Books, 2020).

“Yes— / I am opening myself for the black-horned galaxies / where the soul hides...” In this Poets House Presents video, Rachel Eliza Griffiths reads a selection of poems from her latest collection, Seeing the Body (Norton, 2020). For more Griffiths, read her installment of Ten Questions.

“The tepid / American I sank with my old shoes over the jaws of the Atlantic / could never understand the hard clamor of my laugh…” Safiya Sinclair reads from her debut collection, Cannibal (University of Nebraska Press, 2016), and speaks about poetry as the “language of an impolite body” in this episode of LIT hosted by Yahdon Israel.

“In the dregs of August I watch the birds sprint,” begins Julian Randall in this reading of “Variation on a Theme of Genetics” from his debut collection, Refuse (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), for the Write About Now Poetry reading series in Houston. A Q&A with Nate Marshall by Randall is featured in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. 

“When things shut down, I was immediately feeling like what I want to do is make stuff with other people,” says Ross Gay about life during the quarantine in this conversation with artist Arista Alanis for Vermont Studio Center’s Six Feet Apart video series. A Q&A with Aimee Nezhukumatathil by Gay appears in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I write, I free write, I type it in a computer, and then I start over from the beginning and then I add to it.” In this City of Asylum video, Yona Harvey speaks about her revision process, self-censorship, and the difference processes for writing poems, essays, and comic books. Harvey’s second poetry collection, You Don’t Have to Go to Mars for Love (Four Way Books, 2020), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“The instructor is fairly intelligent and enthusiastic about the material but is unreceptive, even intolerant, of anything that is not a poem or a poem in prose form.” At the 2016 Creative Capital Retreat, Srikanth Reddy reads from his book-length poem Underworld Lit (Wave Books, 2020), which is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this video for the Black Lawrence Press Virtual Reading Series, Alan Chazaro discusses moving to Mexico to write, and reads from his chapbook, This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album (Black Lawrence Press, 2019), and his debut poetry collection, Piñata Theory (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), which is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I want to say I was waiting but I don’t know what I was waiting for.” In this video, Barbara Jane Reyes reads from her poetry collection Letters to a Young Brown Girl (BOA Editions, 2020) for the Well-RED reading series, presented in partnership with Poetry Center San José at Works/San José community art and performance center. The collection is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Every hand that once reached / for me still haunts me at the most unexpected times.” In this video, Aimee Nezhukumatathil reads a selection of poems covering her time as a high school mascot, bad reviews of the seven wonders of the world, and The Incredible Hulk for Poetry @ Tech in Atlanta. A Q&A with Nezhukumatathil by Ross Gay appears in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“the highest promise we could offer / was one to a land or man or idea / greater than we.” In this O, Miami video, Nate Marshall reads a poem from his new collection, Finna, out this month from One World. A Q&A with Marshall by Julian Randall appears in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.