Poets & Writers Theater

"Your life is your life.​ / ​know it while you have it.​ / ​you are marvelous​ / ​the gods wait to delight​ / ​in you.​" ​In this short film, Charles Bukowski's poem "The Laughing Heart," from his poetry and story collection Betting on the Muse (Ecco, 2002), is read by Tom Waits and animated by Bradley Bell.

Charles Bukowski's poem "Roll the Dice" is the inspiration for this film by Willem Martinot. Read by Tom O'Bedlam and set to music by Tony Anderson, the poem serves as a reminder that if something is important to us, it is worth going all the way.

Watch this engaging visual interpretation of Charles Bukowski’s poem “The Man With the Beautiful Eyes.” Filmed by Jonathan Hodgson.

Celebrate Charles Bukowski’s birthday on August 16 by watching this video of his poem, “Nirvana,” about a young man traveling between somewhere and sadness.

Here's an uplifting poem for your Monday! Charles Bukowski's "Alone With Everybody," from Love Is a Dog From Hell (Black Sparrow Books, 1977), is set to visuals by Richelle Dumond, Hannah Vischer, Maartje Slijpen and Mathilde Bindervoet.

Lukas Fiala and Nicole Schmitt recently partnered to create this animated look at Charles Bukowski's rather ecstatic poem, which appears in Burning in Water Drowning in Flame: Selected Poems 1955-1973 (Ecco, 2002).

Self-taught Los Angeles artist Adam Stone paints poet Charles Bukowski in this short video recorded last month.

Charles Bukowski: Poet on the Edge, an exhibition of photographs, letters, special editions, and other ephemera, is being shown at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, through February 11, 2011. For a look at two of the poet's pen-and-ink drawings featured in the exhibition, check out The Written Image in the January/February 2011 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

A newly released two-DVD set, One Tough Mother, combines the films made of Charles Bukowski’s last two readings—in Vancouver in 1979 and in Redondo Beach, California, in 1980. The author of more than sixty books, Bukowski died of leukemia on March 9, 1994.