Keith Gessen
The n+1 coeditor talks about Dave Eggers, McSweeney's, and the problem with literature as "a pretty object." Does n+1 have a beef with Eggers? No, but McSweeny's has proved to be a useful literary foil, says Gessen.
A curated selection of videos, including book trailers, brief interviews, and other literary curiosities updated daily.
Pablo Neruda
The short film "The Me Bird" is a visual interpretation of Neruda's poem of the same name, which ends: "That's why I come and go, / fly and don't fly but sing: / I am the furious bird / of the calm storm." 18bis, the graphics studion in Rio de Janeiro that created the film, explains the imagery: "The frames depicted as jail and the past as a burden serve as the background for the story of a ballerina on a journey towards freedom. A diversified artistic experimentation recreates the tempest that connects bird and dancer."
Gregory Orr
The author of more than ten collections of poetry and several volumes of essays, criticism, and memoir, Orr welcomes viewers into his home (and his writing cottage) in Charlottesville, Virginia, in this video directed by Guy Shahar, part of the Cortland Review's series Poets in Person.
Pablo Medina
The poet reads at the panel "From Exiled Memories to Cubop City Blues: A Tribute to Pablo Medina," which also featured Fred Arroyo and Rigoberto Gonzalez, at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs' annual conference, held last week in Boston.
David Ferry
PBS NewsHour's Jeffrey Brown profiles eighty-eight-year-old David Ferry, who was recently honored with the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize as well as the National Book Award for poetry. Ferry is currently tackling a translation of Virgil's Aeneid.
Francisco X. Alarcón
As part of "Poetry of Resistance: Poets Responding to Xenophobia and Injustice," a panel at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs' annual conference, held last week in Boston, Alarcón read "For the Capitol Nine," which he wrote in response to a group of students chaining themselves to the Arizona State Capitol on April 20, 2010, to protest the anti-immigrant legislation Arizona SB 1070.
The Poetry and Legacy of Adrienne Rich
Marilyn Hacker speaks about the influence of Adrienne Rich, who passed away on March 27, 2012.
Public Writing
Commissioned as part of the City of Melbourne Laneway Commission 2010, Public Writing is a dual-screen digital animation of a readymade sculpture combining a typewriter and the wing and tail plumage of a Yellow Crested Cockatoo. This hybrid writing machine produces text as cutup and concrete poetry.
O. Henry Pun-Off
The thirty-sixth annual O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships will be held on May 18 at the O. Henry Museum in Austin. Check out first-time competitor Jerzy Gwiazdowski as he wins Punniest of Show with this performance at last year's spoken-word event.
Preparing for AWP
Rebecca McClanahan's poem, which was published in River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative, will resonate with anyone in Boston later this week for the annual AWP conference and book fair. "Annual Conference: 8,000 Writers Expected" is read by the poet and visualized by Donald Devet.