Poets & Writers Theater

“The loneliest people have the earth to love / And not one friend their own age.” Jericho Brown reads his poem “Labor,” which appears in his second poetry collection, The New Testament (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), in this video for the Dear Poet series, the Academy of American Poets’ educational project for National Poetry Month.

“If only the sky were kind enough to lend me his blue coat.” In this video, Yuki Tanaka reads an excerpt from the title poem of his debut collection, Chronicle of Drifting (Copper Canyon Press, 2025), which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I was doing nine years in prison, and poems became my way to see the world.” In this Common Read event hosted by the Sims Memorial Library at Southeastern Louisiana University, Reginald Dwayne Betts, author of Felon (Norton, 2020), answers questions from the audience and presents a lecture and reading introduced by Louisiana poet laureate Alison Pelegrin.

In this Villanova University Literary Festival event, Victoria Chang reads from her poetry collections Obit (Copper Canyon Press, 2020) and With My Back to the World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024), and speaks about her ekphrastic poems and the power of writing in conversation with other artists and people in her life.

In this Lambda Literary video, Rob Macaisa Colgate reads “History of Display,” which appears in his debut poetry collection, Hardly Creatures (Tin House Books, 2025). The collection is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Poetry in the Park event in Milwaukee’s Juneau Park hosted by Juneau Park Friends and Woodland Pattern, poets Aleena Ahmed, Ajamou Butler, Steven Espada Dawson, and Margaret Rozga read a selection of poems. Dawson, author of Late to the Search Party (Scribner, 2025), is featured in Literary MagNet in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Jennifer Acker, founder and editor in chief of the Common, answers questions about the journal’s mission, slush piles, and her editorial process in this virtual event with Becky Tuch for the Lit Mag News Roundup. An interview with Acker about the Common’s fifteenth anniversary is featured in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this event hosted by the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, Jane Wong reads “To Love a Mosquito,” a chapter from her memoir, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City (Tin House, 2023), and pieces of her mother’s diary, followed by a discussion about her approaches to poetry versus creative nonfiction.

“I knew I was a god / when you could not / agree on my name // & still, none you spoke / could force me to listen / closer.” In this video, Meg Day reads “Portrait of My Gender as [Inaudible]” as part of Dear Poet, the Academy of American Poets’ educational project for National Poetry Month.

In this episode of the Ehkili podcast, Sahar Mustafah talks to author and editor Susan Muaddi Darraj to discuss her anthology, Ask the Night for a Dream: Palestinian Writing From the Diaspora (Palestine Writes Press, 2024), and the significance of amplifying Palestinian literary voices.

In this New Orleans Book Festival event hosted at Tulane University, authors Sarah M. Broom and Tracy K. Smith speak about the origins of their writing practices, the cultural impact of their respective literary works, and the power of storytelling to reach the truth in a conversation with Vann R. Newkirk II, senior editor at the Atlantic.

In this Books Are Magic event, Tiana Clark reads from her second poetry collection, Scorched Earth (Washington Square Press, 2025), and discusses the cinematic quality of poems and whether poetry should always tell the truth in a conversation with Terrance Hayes.

In this 2024 Writers on Writing event hosted by the Newberry Library and StoryStudio Chicago, Hanif Abdurraqib and Eve L. Ewing discuss their literary careers, the craft of writing, and how they tackle the complexities of art and activism.

In this 2017 Asian American Writers’ Workshop event, Esther Lin reads her poem “I See Her Best,” which appears in her debut collection, Cold Thief Place (Alice James Books, 2025). Lin’s book is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this event hosted by the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College, Evie Shockley reads a selection of new poems, as well as some from her latest poetry collection, suddenly we (Wesleyan University Press, 2023), and discusses her vision for solidarity in these times in a conversation with Yona Harvey.

In this episode of Tightwires with host Hiba Tahir, poet Patrycja Humienik talks about navigating grad school and writing, identity, and her debut collection, We Contain Landscapes (Tin House, 2025), which is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this event hosted by the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, poet and translator Sawako Nakayasu reads from her books Some Girls Walk Into the Country They Are From (Wave Books, 2020) and Pink Waves (Omnidawn, 2023), and talks about the creative repetition inherent to translation and her relationship to improvisational forms in music and dance.

“Noses of bats, it’s time / To write the first poem in English / Each line the last, small / rain turning glass.” In this Poetry Book Society video, Ben Lerner reads his poem “The Pistil,” which appears in a special U.K. slipcase edition of his collection The Lights released by Granta Books and the Poetry Books Society.

“Poetry is a musical accident.” Fred Moten reads a selection of poems that appear in his collection The Little Edges (Wesleyan University Press, 2016) for this 2024 Silo City Reading series event with musician Brandon Lopez.

Lise Goett reads from her third poetry collection, The Radiant (Tupelo Press, 2024), in this Jules’ Poetry Playhouse virtual reading with Mark Wunderlich hosted by Jules Nyquist and John Roche. The Radiant is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.