Poets & Writers Theater

“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.

“imagine his joy as the sun / wizarded forth those abundant sugars / and I plodded barefoot / and prayerful at the first ripe plum’s swell and blush,” reads Ross Gay from his poem “Burial” in this video featuring music by Mary Lattimore. The track is featured in an album called Dilate Your Heart, part of a yearlong release campaign celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of indie record label Jagjaguwar.

“The minute I’m within a sentence, I’m within an orbit of urgencies and rules that to some extent leave me in a position of caginess and wiliness,” says poet and critic Wayne Koestenbaum about the presence of spontaneity in writing in this conversation about fables, expressions of queerness, and process with countertenor and actor Anthony Roth Costanzo. The Artists on Writers | Writers on Artists series is coproduced by Artforum and Bookforum, and sponsored by the Morgan Library & Museum.

In this reading presented by the Kenyon Review, Shira Erlichman, Ross Gay, and Saeed Jones read poetry and present interdisciplinary work, as well as discuss their inspirations and writing processes in a discussion with the magazine’s editor Nicole Terez Dutton.

“I have so many questions of you, / for you are closer to me than anyone // has ever been, tumbling, as you are, this second, / through my heart’s every chamber,” reads Ross Gay from his poem “Poem to My Child, If Ever You Shall Be” in this video with music by Gia Margaret, a collaboration from a new Jagjaguwar album called Dilate Your Heart.

“I want so badly to rub the sponge of gratitude / over every last thing, including you,” reads Ross Gay from his poem “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” in this video set to the music of Bon Iver. This piece is featured in a new album called Dilate Your Heart, part of a yearlong release campaign celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of indie record label Jagjaguwar.

“We’d cut school like knives through butter, the three / Of us — Peter, Stephen and I — to play / Just about all the music we knew…” In this video, award–winning poet Rowan Ricardo Phillips reads “Boys” from his second collection of poems, Heaven (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), which was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2016. 

“It’s a book about a rap group, but, more particularly, a book that is examining how fandom seeps into our lives.” In this PBS NewHour video, Hanif Abdurraqib speaks with Amna Nawaz about his memoir, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (University of Texas Press, 2019), and the ways in which music intertwines with identity and the poignant moments in our lives.

“A green like no other green / in the dale, indelicate green or / green indecent, surpassing / the fern and sprout and April’s / optimistic leaflet some stop / to admire in nature...” In this 2017 video, Timothy Donnelly reads “Diet Mountain Dew” at the Gavagai music and reading series in New York City. Donnelly’s third poetry collection, The Problem of the Many, is out today from Wave Books.

David Tomas Martinez reads his poem “Hoodies” accompanied by musicians David Cieri and Mike Brown for the Gavagai music and reading series at Cornelia Street Café in New York City. Martinez is the author of Hustle (Sarabande Books, 2014) and Post Traumatic Hood Disorder (Sarabande Books, 2018), which is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Poetry in America video, hip-hop artist Nas sits down with Elisa New, professor of American Literature at Harvard University, to discuss his approach to writing and break down his lyrics. Poetry in America, created and directed by New, is a multi-platform initiative that encourages the spread of poetry through classes, conversations, and digital outreach.

Paul Muldoon speaks with PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown about “Muldoon’s Picnic,” a monthly show held at the Irish Arts Center in New York featuring music, storytelling, and poetry.

“Expect poison from the standing water.” Musician and poet Marilyn Manson reads “The Proverbs of Hell” by William Blake at Dark Blushing, an evening of poetry, music, and art presented in collaboration with Write Now Poetry Society, at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

"Simply put, we are creatures of rhythm and repetition.... Pattern can be pleasure." In this TED-Ed lesson by David Silverstein, animated by Avi Ofer, the pleasure we experience in the repetition of language within poetry, and even in Eminem songs, is deciphered. 

"The lessons in tone, rhythm, cadence that you can learn from listening [to music] are important as a poet." Nathaniel Mackey, winner of the 2015 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, describes how listening to international music has influenced his writing process.

"I play Haydn after a black day / and feel a simple warmth in my hands." In this video featuring Tomas Tranströmer's poem "Allegro," the Swedish poet and Nobel laureate plays piano in his home in Stockholm. Tranströmer passed away on March 26 at the age of eighty-three.

The late poet reads his poem "Something in the Way of Things (in Town)" in a 2009 performance with saxophonist Rob Brown. S O S: Poems 1961–2013, a new collection of Baraka's poetry published by Grove Press this month, is featured in Page One in the new issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

The London native and youngest writer on Granta's list of the best young British novelists in 2013, reads from his latest novel, Glow (Knopf, 2015). The Bookshop Band performs a song inspired by Beauman's book called "We Are the Foxes."

“How nice it is to disappear, float into a mist.” Musician and poet Lou Reed died on Sunday at the age of seventy-one. In this video, he recites the haunting and timely lyrics to “Vanishing Act.”