Poets & Writers Theater

“One of the things we must do as poets is certainly to answer the most important question: What does it mean to be human?” says Sonia Sanchez, recipient of the 2022 Jackson Poetry Prize, in this virtual celebration with poets Mary Jo Bang, Marilyn Chin, and Claudia Rankine.

“I’m just a series of words on pieces of paper.” In this interview with John Yau for the New York Foundation for the Arts, the poet and art critic speaks about his family, art, and cooking, which have all influenced his writing. Yau is the recipient of the 2018 Jackson Poetry Prize.

“I wanted to tell people how I became this woman with razor blades between her teeth.” BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez, directed by Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater, and Sabrina Schmidt Gordon, chronicles the life and work of poet and political activist Sonia Sanchez, including her emergence as a seminal figure in the Black Arts Movement, her tireless political activism, and a poetry career so great Maya Angelou called her “a lion in literature’s forest.” Sanchez is the recipient of the 2022 Jackson Poetry Prize.

“The orchard was on fire, but that didn’t stop him from slowly / walking / straight into it, shirtless,” reads Carl Phillips from his poem “Dirt Being Dirt” in this video produced by Washington University in St. Louis where he is a professor. Phillips, author of fifteen books of poetry, most recently Pale Colors in a Tall Field (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), is the recipient of the 2021 Jackson Poetry Prize.

In “Situation 5,” a short film by Jackson Prize–winning poet Claudia Rankine and photographer John Lucas, a history of racial oppression forms the backdrop to a lyrical meditation on racism, imprisonment, and identity. “My brothers are notorious. Though they have not been to prison, they have been imprisoned. But the prison is not a place you enter. It is no place.”

“Don’t be afraid— / Someone has walked this way before / All the world’s music in her hands.” Patricia Spears Jones reads “Discovering America Again” by Lorenzo Thomas, her own poem “The Birth of Rhythm and Blues,” and talks about what it means to be a literary citizen. This video, part of the P.O.P. series, was shot and edited by Rachel Eliza Griffiths in partnership with the Academy of American Poets. Spears Jones is the eleventh winner of the Jackson Poetry Prize.

“Looking down from the window / into the bare augur sycamore tree / in the park across the street / the surprise is how full / of red-winged blackbirds it is…” In this Poets House Presents video, Ed Roberson shares new and unpublished poems still in drafts written during the coronavirus pandemic from his home in Chicago. Roberson is the recipient of the 2020 Jackson Poetry Prize, awarded annually by Poets & Writers to an American poet of exceptional talent.

“When you think you’re getting good, be humble. There’s no end to the learning.” In this video, Arthur Sze visits his high school, the Lawrenceville School, and offers advice from his years of experience as a poet. Sze is the recipient of the 2013 Jackson Poetry Prize and won the 2019 National Book Award in poetry for his collection Sight Lines (Copper Canyon Press, 2019).

"[Los Angeles is] part of an international community. The city has allowed tremendous growth for me, in terms of its cultural outlets, from libraries, great cinema, dance, orchestra, interesting mixes of people.... I see myself as a global citizen and a global writer." Will Alexander, winner of the 2016 Jackson Poetry Prize awarded annually by Poets & Writers, talks about the influence the city of Los Angeles has had on his relationship with language and writing.

The recipient of this year's Jackson Poetry Prize, Claudia Rankine, was honored last night at a reception hosted by Poets & Writers, Inc. In this video from the Split This Rock Poetry Festival, Rankine reads from her book Citizen: An American Lyric, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in October. "And you are not the guy but still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description."