Poets & Writers Theater

For this recording of the Academy of American Poets’ 2025 Blaney Lecture, Kaveh Akbar reminisces on his childhood spent studying and reciting prayers in Arabic and discusses how sacred poetics and language allow us to sit in complexity and remain in awareness. “Such poetry is a potent antidote against a late capitalist empire that would use empty, vapid language to cudgel us into inaction,” Akbar says.

“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.

“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.

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.

“I know all the dark places / Where the sun hasn’t reached yet...” Charles Simic reads his poem “Summer Morning,” which he says needs no introduction, in this video for an installment of Poetry Breaks, a series created by Leita Luchetti in the 1980s and 1990s presented in partnership with the Academy of American Poets. The Pulitzer Prize–winning poet died at the age of eighty-four on January 9, 2023.

“There are kinds of knowledge, in both science and poetry, that can be made visible only by their enacting.” For this recording of the Academy of American Poets’ 2024 Blaney Lecture, Jane Hirshfield discusses the visible versus the invisible and examines poetry’s ways of naming through some of her favorite poems.

“Tonight I pray to the god / of small children and broken toys,” reads January Gill O’Neil from her poem “Prayer” in this installment of the P.O.P. series, shot and edited by Rachel Eliza Griffiths in partnership with the Academy of American Poets. O’Neil’s fourth collection, Glitter Road (CavanKerry Press, 2024), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“in a documentary / they dove in / into the burble / of river, braiding / around each other....” Raymond Luczak reads and performs his poem “Otters,” which appears in his forthcoming collection, Animals Out-There W-i-l-d: A Bestiary in English and ASL Gloss (Unbound Edition Press, 2024), in this Academy of American Poets video. The poem is translated into American Sign Language (ASL) gloss, which uses English words and ASL idioms in the ASL sign order.

“It’s difficult to describe how I felt about the pictures I collected, how I continued to forge a link with them that I didn’t particularly understand.” Patricia Smith speaks about the photographs she collected over the course of twenty years that inspired her latest collection, Unshuttered (Northwestern University Press, 2023), for this recording of the Academy of American Poets’ 2023 Blaney Lecture. For more on Smith, read her conversation with Tyehimba Jess in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“What I’m hoping is, ten years from now, a young Puerto Rican poet on the island or somewhere else knows that this is a possibility, that living a life with and through poetry is an honorable way of engaging with the world.” Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, the first Latino executive director and president of the Academy of American Poets, reflects on why he began writing and the importance of expanding the linguistic diversity of poetry in this PBS NewsHour interview with Jeffrey Brown.

Watch this virtual multilingual reading of poetry in translation presented by Words Without Borders in partnership with the Academy of American Poets. Enjoy poetry in Arabic, French, Malay, Spanish, and English, with readings by poet Jeannette Clariond and translator Samantha Schnee, poet Zahid M. Naser and translator Pauline Fan, poet Samira Negrouche, and translator Kareem James Abu-Zeid.

“I left like a season’s first lover across a window, // slowly like a southern sun / diagonal on a work-back.” Tyree Daye reads “The Mechanical Cotton Picker,” which appears in his poetry collection Cardinal (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), in this Academy of American Poets video.

Poet Brian Blanchfield reads Carl Phillips’s poem “Corral” at the Tippet Rise Art Center in Montana in this short film directed by Matthew Thompson as part of the Above Strands of Earth series produced in collaboration with Tippet Rise and the Academy of American Poets, and commissioned by the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation.

“It seems to me that prose, it may be lyrical, but it isn’t meant to be sung.” In this 2014 Academy of American Poets event, Edward Hirsch discusses the history and practice of poets writing prose with Toi Derricotte and Claudia Rankine.

“I love the deep attribute of poetry to pause, to look, to listen, to respect, to pay attention to variety and learn something new.” Naomi Shihab Nye, Juan Felipe Herrera, and Jane Hirschfield discuss poetry and the poet’s role in America at the 2015 National Book Festival in this video from the Academy of American Poets.

“For me, poetry is a way of living in the world.” In this vintage video from the Poetry Breaks series, Lucille Clifton reflects on what poetry means to her and how it is not about answers, but rather questions. The Academy of American Poets has partnered with Leita Luchetti, who produced and directed the series in the late 1980s and early 1990s, to bring back these videos.

“With regard to war, I can’t help being suspicious of the very reasons we turn to poetry at all,” reads Paisley Rekdal from “Beyond Empathy, Beyond the Archive: Notes on Poetic Representation” for the 2022 Blaney Lecture, an annual lecture on contemporary poetry and poetics created by the Academy of American Poets. “Is our desire one of representation, political change, or emotional catharsis? And is that political change meant to happen on the page, or off it?”

“There are days we live / as if death were nowhere / in the background from joy / to joy to joy, from wing to wing,” reads Li-Young Lee from his poem “From Blossoms,” included in his debut collection, Rose (BOA Editions, 1986), for this installment of Poetry Breaks, a series created by Leita Luchetti in the 1980s and 1990s presented in partnership with the Academy of American Poets.

“I pulled down a book by Gayl Jones, Eva’s Man, and I sat down and didn’t get back up until I finished it—and I felt so haunted,” says Rachel Eliza Griffiths about what inspired her third poetry collection, Mule & Pear (New Issues Press, 2011), in this conversation at the 2013 Poets Forum for the Academy of American Poets.

“Green spring grass on / the hills had cured / by June and by July,” reads Forrest Gander from his poem “Wasteland: on the California Wildfires” for Dear Poet, the Academy of American Poets’ educational project for National Poetry Month.