Poets & Writers Theater

Poet, memoirist, and teacher Reginald Dwayne Betts speaks with PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown about his experience as a teen in prison and how poetry gave him a new identity. Betts is the author of Bastards of the Reagan Era (Four Way Books, 2015) and Felon, forthcoming from Norton in October, and is a recipient of the 2019 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award.

Dorianne Laux reads her poems “If It Weren’t for Bad Ideas, I’d Have No Ideas at All,” “Evening,” “This Close,” and “Savages” at a 2017 reading in Washington, D.C. for the Field Office. Laux’s new collection, Only as the Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems (Norton, 2019), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It takes facility, it takes brilliance, it takes verve!” Marilyn Chin talks to Joseph Ross about what it takes to write poetry and reads poems from her fifth collection, A Portrait of the Self as Nation: New and Selected Poems (Norton, 2018), which is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“What you can do is tell your best story, at that moment.” Camille T. Dungy, whose first essay collection, Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys Into Race, Motherhood, and History (Norton, 2017), is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, offers writers advice on how to overcome roadblocks. 

Diane Ackerman’s The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story (Norton, 2007) recounts the true story of how keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of lives during the German invasion in Poland. The book has been adapted into a feature film directed by Niki Caro, and stars Jessica Chastain and Johan Heldenbergh.

T2 Trainspotting is the sequel to director Danny Boyle’s 1996 film, Trainspotting, an adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s debut novel of the same name. The sequel, based on Welsh’s novel Porno (Norton, 2002), takes place twenty years later and reunites cast members Ewen Bremner, Robert Carlyle, Kelly Macdonald, Ewan McGregor, and Jonny Lee Miller.

“We gaze into your eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes. / We forget the display is blind.” Sandra Beasley, winner of the 2008 Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award in poetry, reads “Inventory” from her third poetry collection, Count the Waves (Norton, 2015).

“Nothing makes me want to hurl a book across the room harder and faster than when the writer gives me a quick little emotional recap to make sure I’m keeping up.” For the Word Works series at Hugo House, Pam Houston, the author most recently of Contents May Have Shifted (Norton, 2012), delivers a lecture on crafting dialogue.

For the launch of the poetry and essay anthology Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin (Norton, 2016) edited by Phil Cushway and Michael Warr, devorah major reads Angela Jackson's contributions, as well as from her own work. major's new poetry collection, and then we became (City Lights Publishers, 2016), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"A dark woman, head bent, listening for something..." Adrienne Rich reads from her collection An Atlas of the Difficult World (Norton, 1991) at a ceremony in 1995 honoring her as the Santa Cruz County Artist of the Year.

"Emerald, as in the leaf of the ash, / though nothing's burned, not yet..." At a celebration of the Kenyon Review hosted by the Strand Book Store, David Baker, the literary magazine's poetry editor, reads a poem by Alison Hutchkraft from a recent issue, as well as poems from his collection Scavenger Loop (Norton, 2015).

Rita Dove reads her poem "American Smooth" at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in 2010. Her new book, Collected Poems: 1974–2004 (Norton, 2016), which is longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award, is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you. / Remember language comes from this.”​ In this video from the Academy of American Poets, Joy Harjo reads the poem “Remember” from her 1983 collection, She Had Some Horses. Harjo is the winner of the 2017 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and is featured in “Vote of Confidence: The Life-Changing Support of an NEA Fellowship” in the May/June 2017 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“How we write is we feel around on the ground with our hands to find what has fallen before us isn’t and must be ours to speak of.” Ari Banias, author of the debut poetry collection, Anybody (Norton, 2016), reads a selection of his poems for the Poetry Project. Banias is featured in “Shadows of Words: Our Twelfth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“A girl ate ices / in the red summer.” In this Motionpoems film, the title poem from Meghan O’Rourke’s second collection, Once (Norton, 2011), is interpreted by filmmakers Angela & Ithyle.

Mary Norris, New Yorker copy editor and author of Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen (Norton, 2015), talks about commas in this episode of a new video series from the New Yorker.

The Northern Irish novelist and poet reads from his poetry collections at the Louisiana Literature festival in Denmark in 2013. Laird's debut collection, To a Fault (Faber & Faber, 2005), won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. His latest collection, Go Giants, was published by Norton in 2013.

"One roams the heavens for a perfect answer / One transfixed like a dead doe, a convex mirror." Marilyn Chin reads "One Child Has Brown Eyes" from her latest poetry collection, Hard Love Province (Norton, 2014).

"Consider the white space / between words on a page, not just / the margins around them." This short film by directors Aaron Kotz and Frida Regaza, narrated by Scott Gentle, features Linda Pastan's poem "Consider the Space Between Stars." Pastan's poetry collection Insomnia is forthcoming in October from Norton.

Sandra Lim reads selections from her poetry collection The Wilderness (Norton, 2014) and Frank X Walker reads from his poetry collection Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers (University of Georgia Press, 2013). The Poets on Craft reading series is sponsored by Cave Canem and the MFA Creative Writing Program at the New School.