Poets & Writers Theater

In this recent installment of UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems series, Sherwin Bitsui reads selected poems from his collections Flood Song (Copper Canyon Press, 2009) and Dissolve (Copper Canyon Press, 2018).

In this recent installment of UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems series, Brandon Shimoda reads a selection of poems and essays with the theme of “oranges,” which address the memory of Japanese American incarceration and war.

“The age of portrait is drugged. Beauty / is symmetry so rare it’s a mystery.” In this 2018 event, Fady Joudah reads a selection of poems from his collection Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance (Milkweed Editions, 2018) for the Lunch Poems reading series at UC Berkeley. Joudah is the recipient of the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize.

In this 2013 video, Lyn Hejinian reads from her book The Book of a Thousand Eyes (Omnidawn, 2012) for the Lunch Poem reading series at the University of California in Berkeley, where she was Professor and John F. Hotchkis Chair Emerita. Hejinian died at the age of eighty-two on February 24, 2024.

“At one time, / I asked for everything.” Sandra Lim reads from her poetry collection The Curious Thing (Norton, 2021) for this virtual reading hosted by UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems reading series with an introduction by poet Noah Warren. Lim is the recipient of the 2023 Jackson Poetry Prize.

“Have I forgotten it – / wild conch-shell dialect, / black apostrophe curled / tight on my tongue?” In this video, Safiya Sinclair reads a selection of poems from her debut collection, Cannibal (University of Nebraska Press, 2016), as well as new poems for this installment of UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems series with an introduction by poet Noah Warren.

“I don’t want to sound unreasonable / but I need to be in love immediately.” In this video, Alex Dimitrov reads a selection of poems from his collection Love and Other Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2021) for UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems reading series. “Twelve Films That Put Me in the Mood to Write” by Dimitrov appears in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“To feel signs depends on how & why / the singer’s song puckers the mouth.” Yusef Komunyakaa reads his poem “A World of Daughters,” which appears in his collection Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth: New and Selected Poems, 2001-2021 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), among other selections in this 2020 virtual reading for UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems series.

“Revelation never comes as a fern uncoiling / a frond in mist; it comes when I trip on a root, / slap a mosquito on my arm,” reads Arthur Sze from his poem "Earthshine" in this 2008 video for the Lunch Poems reading series at the University of California, Berkeley. Sze’s latest collection, The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2021), is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 2018 video, Matthew Zapruder reads from his poetry collections Come On All You Ghosts (Copper Canyon Press, 2012) and Sun Bear (Copper Canyon Press, 2015), and his book Why Poetry (Ecco, 2017) for the Lunch Poems reading series at UC Berkeley. Zapruder’s fifth poetry collection, Father’s Day (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 2016 video, Carmen Giménez Smith reads from a selection of her poems for the Lunch Poems reading series at the University of California in Berkeley. Smith speaks about her fifth book, Cruel Futures (City Lights Books, 2018), in “The Love of Labor, the Labor of Love” by Rigoberto González in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 2002 video, poet and essayist Mary Ruefle reads a selection of poems and prose pieces for the Lunch Poems reading series at UC Berkeley. Ruefle is the author of On Imagination (Sarabande Books, 2017), a chapbook-length essay exploring the act of writing.

"I’m so damned literary / and at the same time the waters rushing past remind me of / nothing..." Hilary Kaplan reads Frank O'Hara's "Poem en Forme de Saw" from Lunch Poems, first published in 1964 by City Lights Publishers. Angélica Freitas's debut collection, Rilke Shake (Phoneme Media, 2015), translated from the Portuguese by Kaplan, won the 2016 Best Translated Book Award in poetry.