Poets & Writers Theater

“Poses no significant litter problem. / Ranks as ‘not particularly outstanding,’ according to the Forest Service.” At the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University, Forrest Gander reads from the opening of Casting Deep Shade (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), C. D. Wright’s posthumously published collection. The multigenre, three-panel, hardcover book is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Brenda Shaughnessy reads her poem “I Have a Time Machine” and discusses the role that poetry can play in recovering from traumatic experiences for a TEDx event at Harvard University. Shaughnessy is the author of Our Andromeda (Copper Canyon Press, 2012) and So Much Synth (Copper Canyon Press, 2016).

“In between, your mind is full of trees. / And it’s quite dark despite the moon.” This short film of Laura Kasischke’s poem “This Is Not a Fairytale” was created by Laurent Barthelemy and Shizuka Kusayanagi for Motionpoems. Kasischke’s most recent collection, Where Now (Copper Canyon Press, 2017), is longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award in poetry.

In this video, Javier Zamora reads his poem “Saguaros” from his debut poetry collection, Unaccompanied (Copper Canyon Press, 2017). Zamora speaks about his collection in “First” by Rigoberto González in the September/October 2017 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“We’re a narrative people. We love stories.” Michael McGriff shares about how his family and hometown influence his poems. McGriff’s fourth poetry collection, Early Hour (Copper Canyon Press, 2017), is featured in Page One in the September/October 2017 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Dean Rader reads his poem inspired by Leilani Bustamante’s painting “Lady Moore” and “Self-Portrait in Place” for a Quiet Lightning reading series event. Rader’s most recent collection, Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry (Copper Canyon Press, 2017), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Understand we have never seen an apple, so we are completely free from apples.” In this 2014 video of the first PEN DIY series event, Natalie Diaz breaks down five personal steps to writing about family, and discusses her poetry with Mike Albo.

“Look at the old house in the dawn rain / all the flowers are forms of water…” In this excerpt from the documentary Even Though the Whole World Is Burning, W. S. Merwin reads his poem “Rain Light.” Merwin’s latest collection, Garden Time (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"I kind of always assume that you don't write the poem you want to write...that's actually quite freeing because it means you discover something in the act of composition that you didn't know in advance." Ben Lerner talks about his first poetry collection, The Lichtenberg Figures (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), for the Paris Review's "My First Time" video series. Lerner's first nonfiction book, The Hatred of Poetry (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"They called her Sparrow, / so the Lord would be watchful of her..." Norman Dubie, Arizona State University Regents' Professor of English, reads "Sparrow" from his poetry collection The Quotations of Bone (Copper Canyon Press, 2015), which was awarded the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize.

"Jimmy ran down the road / With the knife in his mouth / He was naked / And the moon / Was a dead man floating down the river..." Listen to "The Singing Knives," a poem by Frank Stanford, read by his good friend Bill Willett. Stanford's posthumous collection What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford (Copper Canyon Press, 2015) is shortlisted for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award.

“There is nothing one man will not do to another.” Carolyn Forché reads “The Visitor” and “The Colonel” from her second poetry collection, The Country Between Us (Copper Canyon Press, 1981), which bore witness to her travels in El Salvador in the late 1970s. Forché’s debut memoir, What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance (Penguin Press, 2019), documents that same period of time and is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“So few grains of happiness / measured against all the dark / and still the scales balance.” In this video produced by the Academy of American Poets, Jane Hirshfield reads “The Weighing” from the forthcoming anthology, Here: Poems for the Planet, which will be published by Copper Canyon Press in April. The anthology will include poems by Margaret Atwood, Kwame Dawes, Ross Gay, Nikki Giovanni, Robert Hass, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Mary Oliver, and others.

“This brown girl from Chicago also loves the outdoors.” In the book trailer for her fourth poetry collection, Oceanic (Copper Canyon Press, 2018), Aimee Nezhukumatathil describes her motivation for writing and her passion for the natural world. Her illustrated collection of nature essays, World of Wonder, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions.

In this Motionpoems film, Matthew Zapruder’s poem “Albert Einstein,” from his collection Sun Bear (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), is animated by John Akre. Zapruder’s most recent book, Why Poetry (Ecco, 2017), explores what poems are and how all readers can enjoy them.

In this animated short film by Phil Borst, which was commissioned by the Washington Post, Victoria Chang reads the conclusion of her poem “The Boss Calls Us at Home.” Chang’s fourth book of poetry, Barbie Chang (Copper Canyon Press, 2017), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“When a woman you love hits you / on the head with a book / you love, is that love?” At the New School, Brenda Shaughnessy reads from her poetry collection So Much Synth (Copper Canyon Press, 2016) for a Cave Canem event with poet Jamaal May.

“Sometimes I ask for too much just to feel my mouth overflow.” Ocean Vuong reads “Notebook Fragments” for Button Poetry at the 2016 AWP conference and book fair. Vuong, author of Night Sky With Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), is featured in “Shadows of Words: Our Twelfth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Sometimes I feel him / pushing a little bit on my lower back with a palm / made of ghost orchids and literal wind.” Matthew Zapruder reads from his poetry collection Come On All You Ghosts (Copper Canyon Press, 2010) for the Holloway Series in Poetry in 2010.

"Outside, a soldier spits out / his cigarette as footsteps fill the square like stones / fallen from the sky. May / all your Christmases be white / as the traffic guard unstraps his holster." Ocean Vuong shares poems from his debut collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), and speaks about the oral tradition of his family and his personal ties to the Vietnam War for a series on PBS NewsHour.