Poets & Writers Theater

“I no longer want to do this thing of speaking for the voiceless, it’s about passing the microphone and allowing those people to finally speak for themselves.” In this video produced by the Guardian Labs, author and spoken word artist Pages Matam talks about the power of poetry and creating spaces where shared experiences can act as both inspiration and a catalyst for change.

“What does it mean to write something urgent right now?” Don’t Be Nice is a 2018 documentary directed by Max Powers that follows a group of poets from the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City’s East Village who grapple with the political climate punctuated by the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements as they prepare for the National Poetry Slam championship during the summer of 2016.

“Fear of joy is the darkest of captivities.” In this Button Poetry video, Phil Kaye reads his poem “Teeth” at Gray Area in San Francisco.

“I wanted to tell people how I became this woman with razor blades between her teeth.” BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez, directed by Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater, and Sabrina Schmidt Gordon, chronicles the life and work of poet and political activist Sonia Sanchez, including her emergence as a seminal figure in the Black Arts Movement, her tireless political activism, and a poetry career so great Maya Angelou called her “a lion in literature’s forest.” Sanchez is the recipient of the 2022 Jackson Poetry Prize.

“Even when I was starving, I was eating. Inhaling words like a kid with a lunch card, like this is a meal I might miss,” reads Natasha Carrizosa from her poem “ABC ME” at Station Museum in Houston, Texas for Write About Now Poetry.

From William Shakespeare to Dr. Seuss, this episode of Otherwords, a PBS Storied web series hosted by sociolinguist Dr. Erica Brozovsky, digs deep into verbal innovations and the history of words created by writers.

“I know most people try hard / to do good and find out too late / they should have tried softer.” Andrea Gibson reads “The Year of No Grudges, or Instead of Writing a Furious Text, I Try a Poem” from their latest poetry collection, You Better Be Lightning (Button Poetry, 2021), in this video from a stage in Longmont, Colorado.

“Hip-hop is Ralph Ellison, who once said the blues is like running a razor blade along an open sore.” In this audio recording from the 1996 album Flippin’ the Script: Rap Meets Poetry released by Mouth Almighty Records, author and critic Greg Tate reads his poem “What Is Hip Hop?” The influential journalist and author of Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America (Simon & Schuster, 1992), died at the age of sixty-three on December 7, 2021.

“Sea turtle, be snapping. See poetry, be action.” In this video, Mason Granger reads his poem “Sea Turtle” for Write About Now Poetry, which hosts a weekly spoken word open mic series in Houston.

“For nearly two hours, someone stood in my doorway watching me.” Get in the Halloween spirit with this animated video based on a true story produced by Jezebel for their annual Scary Story contest. Read this fiction prompt from The Time Is Now for inspiration to write your own terrifying tale.

“You, a wild orchid and me, a rice picker. I pluck you as if you were a food to eat.” In this 2018 Button Poetry Live performance, Melania Luisa Marte reads her poem “Adam Be a Migrant Farmer.”

“These poets really took me on a journey. Through each of their poems you got to essentially travel across L.A. into different neighborhoods, into different people’s spaces,” says director Carlos López Estrada about meeting the twenty-seven spoken word poets from the nonprofit Get Lit who cowrote and are featured in his new film, Summertime.

“Trucks cruisin’ down the avenue / carrying nuclear garbage right next to you / and it’s legal.” In this installment of Poetry Spots, a WNYC television show produced by Bob Holman between 1987 and 1993, June Jordan reads her poem “Song of the Law Abiding Citizen.”

“I have a bad habit of using random facts as a coping mechanism.” Watch this short film directed by Ryan Boyland featuring his poem “Rue,” which won the 2020 Button Poetry Video Contest for Emerging Writers.

“To love yourself so much you don’t wanna exploit anybody. Can you imagine not wanting to exploit anyone?” says Sonia Sanchez in her lecture to students in this 1991 episode of Writers Uncensored presented by the Lannan Foundation. This vintage episode features Sanchez and Lucille Clifton reading from their work and talking about their respective paths as poets.

“My mother doesn’t write recipes, / she just knows. // Braised pork and eggs, / rice cleaned thoroughly.” Joshua Nguyen, author of the chapbook, American Lục Bát for My Mother (Bull City Press, 2021), reads two poems in this video for the Write About Now Poetry reading series in Houston. 

Directed by Academy Award winner Martin Scorsese, Pretend It’s a City features the return of sardonic writer and public speaker Fran Lebowitz in conversation with the director as she shares anecdotes about her early life and career in New York City in the 1970s. The Netflix series continues the partnership of the longtime friends, who worked together on the 2010 HBO documentary Public Speaking.

“My poetry, never a quiet moment. You are mine, and you are content with the idea of having nowhere to go.” In this video, Marlon Lizama reads “Poetry” for the Write About Now Poetry series in Houston.

“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.

“Sometimes I too want to be a poem. / I don’t want to be this pain, / but the language used / to unearth it.” In this Button Poetry video, Michael Lee reads “Just Yesterday” from his debut poetry collection, The Only Worlds We Know (Button Poetry, 2019).