Poets & Writers Theater

“My impression is that there is a much bigger audience for poetry than there was when I was young,” says the late poet John Ashbery in this 2011 interview with Belinda Luscombe for TIME Magazine on fame, poverty, art criticism, obscurity, and why he dislikes poetry readings.

In honor of the seventh anniversary of poet Philip Levine’s passing, Tom Sleigh speaks about their friendship and reads “That Word,” a poem from his latest book, The King’s Touch (Graywolf Press, 2022), dedicated to Levine in this video directed by Ed Robbins. Sleigh says of Levine: “Phil’s intelligence was as brilliantly acerbic as it was heartbreaking.”

“There’s so many young people, the first time they start to think seriously about class, about sexuality, about gender, about identity, about vulnerability, about spirituality is through her work,” says Princeton University professor Imani Perry about the legacy of bell hooks in this PBS NewsHour video commemorating the influential critic, author, and feminist scholar and activist who died at the age of sixty-nine on December 15, 2021.

“Hip-hop is Ralph Ellison, who once said the blues is like running a razor blade along an open sore.” In this audio recording from the 1996 album Flippin’ the Script: Rap Meets Poetry released by Mouth Almighty Records, author and critic Greg Tate reads his poem “What Is Hip Hop?” The influential journalist and author of Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America (Simon & Schuster, 1992), died at the age of sixty-three on December 7, 2021.

“Etel Adnan was trained as an academic philosopher but found her voice as a poet.” Watch this video for “Etel Adnan: Light’s New Measure,” a current exhibition of the artist’s paintings, tapestries, and works on paper at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Adnan died at the age of ninety-six on November 14, 2021.

“Our cries are heard as noise, / our suffering considered / natural. Native citizens, / we are not free / to roam,” reads the late Kamilah Aisha Moon from her poem “The Emperor’s Deer” in this 2016 Define: BLACK video.

“I look back, just with a little wonder. Wonder that I stuck with this thing.” In this 2004 interview with Jeffrey Brown for PBS NewsHour, Philip Roth reflects on his writing career and the role of a writer. Roth died at the age of eighty-five on May 22, 2018.

“Great blue mountain! Ghost. / I look at you / from the porch of the farmhouse / where I watched you all summer / as a boy,” reads the late Donald Hall from his poem “Mount Kearsarge” in this 2018 PBS NewsHour video commemorating his death at the age of eighty-nine. For more Hall, read “Fleeting: In Memory of Donald Hall” by Christopher Locke.

“To me all good poetry is experimental in some way,” says poet Susan Howe in this film about Emily Dickinson by poet and filmmaker Benita Raphan, filmed on location at the Morgan Library & Museum and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Raphan, a Guggenheim fellow known for her short experimental films, died at the age of fifty-eight on January 10, 2021.

“If only we knew / what music is. / If only we understood,” reads Adam Zagajewski from his poem “Poets Photographed,” included in his collection Unseen Hand, in this 2015 reading at Trinity College in Cambridge, England. Recipient of the 2004 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and many other literary awards, Zagajewski died at the age of seventy-five in Krakow, Poland, on March 21, 2021.

“You do not separate between dancing, music, writing, painting, it’s all one, it is expression of the self,” says Nawal El Saadawi about her journey to become a writer in this 2018 interview with Athena40’s Elizabeth Filippouli. The Egyptian writer and activist died at the age of eighty-nine on March 21, 2021.

“This is a woman, whose great-great-grandmother was a slave from the West African Kingdom of Dahomey, now the Republic of Benin. A woman who went on to be one of the most celebrated artists of her lifetime,” narrates Janice Harrington in this mini-documentary “Lucille Clifton: A Poet’s Life and Legacy,” produced by BOA Editions and Hunger Media.

“It was still the last frontier when I arrived in 1951. It was a wide-open city.” In this 2015 video, Lawrence Ferlinghetti recalls his early days in San Francisco and speaks about the changing life of the city. Ferlinghetti died at the age of 101 on February 22, 2021. An interview with the legendary poet and founder of City Lights Booksellers and Publishers is featured in the March/April 2007 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I am convinced that the more I am well-known, the better known I am, the easier it is for other writers to come along,” says Toni Morrison in this 1987 interview with PBS NewsHour’s Charlayne Hunter-Gault on her success as an author and what inspired her novel Beloved, which won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize in fiction.

“I am poling / my way into my life. / It seems / like another life,” reads the late poet Jean Valentine from her poem “La Chalupa, the Boat” in this 2010 video recorded at Boston University. Valentine is the author of fourteen poetry collections including Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965–2003, which won the National Book Award, and Break the Glass, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She died at the age of eighty-six on December 29, 2020.

“There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill / and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows…” In this 2009 video, pioneering feminist poet Adrienne Rich reads her poem “What Kind of Times Are These?” at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. Rich died at the age of eighty-two on March 27, 2012.

“You knew that she was motivated by the basic concept that we’re here for a short while, and we have to make sure we make it about something larger than just ourselves.” In this video from the 2020 National Book Awards Ceremony, authors and colleagues speak about the influence of Carolyn Reidy, the late president and CEO of Simon & Schuster, who was honored with the National Book Foundation’s 2020 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. Reidy died on May 12, 2020 at the age of seventy-one.

“When people say nothing has changed, we’re trying to say through March, come and walk in my shoes.” In this 2013 Politics and Prose Bookstore video, the late congressman and author John Lewis speaks about the personal experiences that led to the creation of his award–winning graphic memoir trilogy March, cowritten by Andrew Aydin and illustrated and lettered by Nate Powell. Lewis died at the age of eighty on July 17, 2020.

“Whatever shall i do with my dead / my tombs & mausoleums / these potted plants tended by strangers...” Mahogany L. Browne reads “for my dead & loved ones” and “Blood Rhythms - Blood Currents - Black N’ Blue Stylin’” by Ntozake Shange, and her own poem “Black Girl Magic” at a tribute for Shange at New York City’s 92nd Street Y.

“Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names.” The life of Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Toni Morrison is remembered through this 2004 interview for CBS Sunday Morning highlighting what was most important to her: being a mother and a writer. Morrison died at the age of eighty-eight on August 5, 2019.