Poets & Writers Theater

In this inaugural Mary Oliver Memorial Event, U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón introduces her signature project which includes site-specific poetry installations in seven national parks and the anthology You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, published by Milkweed Editions in association with the Library of Congress. Limón is joined by poets Molly McCully Brown, Jake Skeets, Analicia Sotelo, and Paul Tran for a reading and conversation.

“As poets, our job is to make all the music complete on the page.” In this video, U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón presents a keynote speech on the power and beauty of poetry, and speaks with Dr. Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, about the intersections between art and science at the 2024 South by Southwest festival.

In this Poetry of Resilience interview, U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón reads from her collection The Hurting Kind (Milkweed Editions, 2022) and speaks about the emotions she writes from and the importance of poetry for healing with hosts and poets Danusha Laméris and James Crews.

In this interview for MSNBC’s American Voices, Ada Limón speaks to host Alicia Menendez about becoming the first Latina U.S. poet laureate, her journey to a writing career, life in Kentucky, and how poetry can bring people together in “those moments when we can put everything down for one minute and just see ourselves, each other.”

“Poetry is a place where both grief and grace can live, where rage can be explored and examined, not simply exploited.” In this 2018 PBS NewsHour video, Ada Limón shares her opinion on why she sees more and more people turning to poetry in the search for “radical hope” in the digital age. Limón was named the twenty-fourth poet laureate of the United States today.

“No matter the pull toward brink. No / matter the florid, deep sleep awaits. / There is a time for everything.” Ada Limón reads “Sorrow Is Not My Name” by Ross Gay and shares why this poem means so much to her for this new video series “The Poem I Wish I Had Read,” created by the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College.

Ada Limón speaks about her poetry collections Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015) and The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018) with PBS Books at the 2018 AWP Annual Conference & Book Fair. Limón is interviewed by Carrie Fountain in “The Poetry of Perseverance” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"What puts the mean in some of us?" Ada Limón reads her elegy, "Marketing Life for Those of Us Left," in this video for the Academy of American Poets. Limón's fourth poetry collection, Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015), is a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award.

“[The poem] allows for a place for the reader to breathe,” says Ada Limón in this 2019 reading and conversation about her books of poetry with Washington Post book critic Ron Charles, hosted by the Library of Congress. “In that empty space we actually bring ourselves to the page, so that the writer is not the only person experiencing the poem, but the reader is part of that journey.”