Poets & Writers Theater

In this 1998 video from Howard County Poetry & Literature Society’s The Writing Life series, Amiri Baraka reads a selection of his poems including his first published poem, “Preface to a 20 Volume Suicide Note,” and speaks with poet E. Ethelbert Miller about his writing influences, the link between his poetry and music, and pushing against the norms.

The late poet reads his poem "Something in the Way of Things (in Town)" in a 2009 performance with saxophonist Rob Brown. S O S: Poems 1961–2013, a new collection of Baraka's poetry published by Grove Press this month, is featured in Page One in the new issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Dramatist, novelist, and poet Amiri Baraka passed away on Thursday at age seventy-nine. In this clip, filmed as part of a 2012 interview with Dr. Corinne Fowler, he discusses the purpose of literature and the powerful experience of listening to poetry.

“Hubert Selby was the underdog and the voice for the...downtrodden, and was marginalized because he spoke up for the little guy,” says Henry Rollins. “But you see the great humanity and the warmth and richness that he brought to things.” The author of nine novels who died in 2004 is celebrated by two of his greatest champions, Rollins and Amiri Baraka, in this video from Open Road Media.

"He was so old-school he kicked dope strapped down in jail in West Hollywood," says author Jerry Stahl, who joins Henry Rollins and Amiri Baraka in this profile of the author of Last Exit to Brooklyn, Requiem for a Dream, The Demon, and The Room, now available as e-books from Open Road Media.