Poets & Writers Theater

“I like to think of subtext as almost being horizontal instead of below the surface of the text,” says award-winning playwright, poet, and essayist Sarah Ruhl in this video for Conchord Theatricals. For more from Ruhl, read her essay “Twelve Reasons You Should Keep Writing” published in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this video, finalists for the 2022 National Book Award in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, translated literature, and young people’s literature read excerpts from their honored works. The event, hosted by writer Saraciea J. Fennell, is presented in partnership with the National Book Foundation and the NYU Creative Writing Program.

Watch the video for musician Andrew Bird’s interpretation of Emily Dickinson’s poem “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” a duet with Phoebe Bridgers included in his album Inside Problems. Of the poem, Bird says, “I came across this Emily Dickinson poem and found it to be the most vivid description of an inner world I’ve ever encountered.”

“Your waking world is shaped by dreams.” The Sandman is a television adaptation of the beloved and award-winning DC Comics series written by Neil Gaiman. Co-developed and executive produced by Gaiman, the ten-episode Netflix series stars Tom Sturridge, Gwendoline Christie, Jenna Coleman, Stephen Fry, Patton Oswalt, and David Thewlis.

“To me, reading becomes a lot more palatable if young people realize that the stories, the books that exist within them are as valuable as the books that exist on the outside of them.” In this CBS Sunday Morning interview, Jane Pauley speaks to Jason Reynolds, award-winning author and National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, about lifting up children through storytelling, his journey as a writer, and the importance of friendship.

“Recalling the terror we experienced long ago, I wonder, is that something they wanted, to be acknowledged?” Belongings is a short film about the loss of a mother and a haunted childhood home directed by Alex Coppola and written by and starring Morgan Talty, author of the debut story collection, Night of the Living Rez (Tin House, 2022). Talty is introduced by Brandon Hobson in “First Fiction 2022” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this video from the 2021 Windham-Campbell Virtual Festival, Renee Gladman reads from her book Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge (Dorothy, a publishing project, 2013) and collaborates in a performance with sound artist Val Jeanty. Gladman’s new book, Plans for Sentences (Wave Books, 2022), is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“imagine his joy as the sun / wizarded forth those abundant sugars / and I plodded barefoot / and prayerful at the first ripe plum’s swell and blush,” reads Ross Gay from his poem “Burial” in this video featuring music by Mary Lattimore. The track is featured in an album called Dilate Your Heart, part of a yearlong release campaign celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of indie record label Jagjaguwar.

“If we are always the threat / To whom or where do we turn for protection?” In this Litquake festival video from 2020, Pamela Sneed reads from her book Funeral Diva (City Light Books, 2020), for which she won the 2021 Lambda Literary Award’s lesbian poetry prize, and speaks with Tommy Pico about breaking apart genres and writing about pandemics.

“The minute I’m within a sentence, I’m within an orbit of urgencies and rules that to some extent leave me in a position of caginess and wiliness,” says poet and critic Wayne Koestenbaum about the presence of spontaneity in writing in this conversation about fables, expressions of queerness, and process with countertenor and actor Anthony Roth Costanzo. The Artists on Writers | Writers on Artists series is coproduced by Artforum and Bookforum, and sponsored by the Morgan Library & Museum.

“To me all good poetry is experimental in some way,” says poet Susan Howe in this film about Emily Dickinson by poet and filmmaker Benita Raphan, filmed on location at the Morgan Library & Museum and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Raphan, a Guggenheim fellow known for her short experimental films, died at the age of fifty-eight on January 10, 2021.

In “Situation 5,” a short film by Jackson Prize–winning poet Claudia Rankine and photographer John Lucas, a history of racial oppression forms the backdrop to a lyrical meditation on racism, imprisonment, and identity. “My brothers are notorious. Though they have not been to prison, they have been imprisoned. But the prison is not a place you enter. It is no place.”

Watch this trailer for the Cadence: Video Poetry Festival, presented by Northwest Film Forum and programmed in collaboration with Seattle author Chelsea Werner-Jatzke and artist Rana San. The annual festival is a series of screenings, workshops, and discussions on the genre of video poetry held during National Poetry Month in April. Read more about the Seattle literary scene in our Seattle City Guide written by E. J. Koh.

“I have so many questions of you, / for you are closer to me than anyone // has ever been, tumbling, as you are, this second, / through my heart’s every chamber,” reads Ross Gay from his poem “Poem to My Child, If Ever You Shall Be” in this video with music by Gia Margaret, a collaboration from a new Jagjaguwar album called Dilate Your Heart.

“I want so badly to rub the sponge of gratitude / over every last thing, including you,” reads Ross Gay from his poem “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” in this video set to the music of Bon Iver. This piece is featured in a new album called Dilate Your Heart, part of a yearlong release campaign celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of indie record label Jagjaguwar.

“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.”

“How does the elegy believe me?” This lyric art video created by Rachel Eliza Griffiths offers a peek into her new book of poems and self-portraits, Seeing the Body (Norton, 2020), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

This behind-the-scenes short film directed by Yvonne Shirley of a 2018 T Magazine photo shoot at the Brooklyn Historical Society features Black American male poets, playwrights, and novelists—such as James Hannaham, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Ishmael Reed—speaking on identity in the publishing world and paying tribute to their favorite Black female writers.

In this 92Y video, artist Shantell Martin creates a live performance illustration inspired by a speech Maya Angelou delivered at the 92Y’s Kaufmann Concert Hall in 1971.

To celebrate the launch of The Poets & Writers Complete Guide to Being a Writer (Avid Reader Press, 2020), authors Mary Gannon and Kevin Larimer speak with novelist Nicole Dennis-Benn, literary agent Annie Hwang, publicist Michael Taeckens, and publisher and editor Jamia Wilson about the need for new voices in literature and the ins and outs of the literary world in this online event hosted by the Center for Fiction.