Poets & Writers Theater

“Would you agree it’s possible to be both enlightened and in the dark?” For the 2019 Blaney Lecture, an annual lecture on contemporary poetry and poetics created by the Academy of American Poets, Terrance Hayes presents “Survey of an American Century” and reflects on the last century of poetry at the Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House in New York.

“Poetry is a place where both grief and grace can live, where rage can be explored and examined, not simply exploited.…” In this PBS NewsHour video, Ada Limón shares her opinion on why she sees more and more people turning to poetry in the search for “radical hope” in the digital age.

“I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison, / Part panic closet...” Terrance Hayes reads poems from his new collection, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (Penguin Books, 2018), and discusses the origin and inspiration for the book at the 2017 Palm Beach Poetry Festival. Hayes reads more poems from the collection in the twentieth episode of Ampersand: The Poets & Writers Podcast, and is interviewed by Hanif Abdurraqib for the cover profile in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"Can we reclaim a word? Can we take a word and drop it and crack it open, or are we always a prisoner to it?" Poets Terrance Hayes and Saeed Jones talk about craft, the evolution of language, and why America needs poetry for HEArt, a journal of contemporary literature and art that challenges discrimination and promotes social justice. Jones will join the Why We Write panel on January 9 at Poets & Writers Live in Austin, Texas.

"I'm pursuing a kind of language which is just as complicated, and also as transparent, as human experience." The MacArthur Genius Grant–recipient reads from his new poetry collection, How to Be Drawn (Penguin, 2015), and speaks about his musical influences and how he continues to develop his voice.

In this video, poets Kevin Young, Evie Shockley, and Terrance Hayes participate in a roundtable symposium on newness in the creative arts and American expressive culture held at Brown University’s Granoff Center for the Creative Arts.

Terrance Hayes, who on Wednesday took home the National Book Award in poetry for his latest collection, Lighthead (Penguin), read one of his poems at the Jazz Poetry Concert in Pittsburgh.