Poets & Writers Theater

“I was doing nine years in prison, and poems became my way to see the world.” In this Common Read event hosted by the Sims Memorial Library at Southeastern Louisiana University, Reginald Dwayne Betts, author of Felon (Norton, 2020), answers questions from the audience and presents a lecture and reading introduced by Louisiana poet laureate Alison Pelegrin.

In this Villanova University Literary Festival event, Victoria Chang reads from her poetry collections Obit (Copper Canyon Press, 2020) and With My Back to the World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024), and speaks about her ekphrastic poems and the power of writing in conversation with other artists and people in her life.

In this event hosted by the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, Jane Wong reads “To Love a Mosquito,” a chapter from her memoir, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City (Tin House, 2023), and pieces of her mother’s diary, followed by a discussion about her approaches to poetry versus creative nonfiction.

“I knew I was a god / when you could not / agree on my name // & still, none you spoke / could force me to listen / closer.” In this video, Meg Day reads “Portrait of My Gender as [Inaudible]” as part of Dear Poet, the Academy of American Poets’ educational project for National Poetry Month.

In this Books Are Magic event, Tiana Clark reads from her second poetry collection, Scorched Earth (Washington Square Press, 2025), and discusses the cinematic quality of poems and whether poetry should always tell the truth in a conversation with Terrance Hayes.

In this 2017 Asian American Writers’ Workshop event, Esther Lin reads her poem “I See Her Best,” which appears in her debut collection, Cold Thief Place (Alice James Books, 2025). Lin’s book is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Noses of bats, it’s time / To write the first poem in English / Each line the last, small / rain turning glass.” In this Poetry Book Society video, Ben Lerner reads his poem “The Pistil,” which appears in a special U.K. slipcase edition of his collection The Lights released by Granta Books and the Poetry Books Society.

Lise Goett reads from her third poetry collection, The Radiant (Tupelo Press, 2024), in this Jules’ Poetry Playhouse virtual reading with Mark Wunderlich hosted by Jules Nyquist and John Roche. The Radiant is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Poets & Writers Magazine features editor India Lena González hosts this two-part event celebrating the ten debut poets featured in “The Luminous Life: Our Twentieth Annual Look at Debut Poets” from our January/February 2025 issue. The virtual event includes readings from the poets, as well as conversations about their debut books, their influences and inspirations, and their individual paths to publication.

In this Harvard Radcliffe Institute event, Ilya Kaminsky reads a selection of poems from his collection Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press, 2019), including “We Lived Happily During the War” and “While the Child Sleeps, Sonya Undresses,” and discusses being an immigrant and poet in between languages in a conversation with Stephanie Sandler.

“Some things, then, cannot be repaired and must go on, into a kind of dusk that seems somehow endless,” reads Matthew Nienow from his poem “Dusk Loop,” which appears in his second poetry collection, If Nothing (Alice James Books, 2025), in this reading and conversation for the Table For Deuce podcast hosted by poets Kate Hanson Foster and Michael Schmeltzer. Nienow’s collection is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 2024 Guest Writers Series event hosted by the University of Utah’s Creative Writing department, Monica Youn reads poems about magpies from her fourth collection, From From (Graywolf Press, 2023), and Béatrice Szymkowiak discusses how natural history inspired her debut collection, B/RDS (University of Utah Press, 2023).

In this 2023 Bristol Ideas virtual event, Solmaz Sharif speaks with host Zoë Steadman-Milne about the nature of customs and interrogating those imposed within nation-states and literature, and reads from her poetry collection Customs, her first collection to be published in the U.K. by Bloomsbury.

“Poetry is our essential language, and it is as essential to me as breathing.” In this Library of Congress event, Arthur Sze accepts the 2024 Rebekah Bobbitt Johnson National Prize for Poetry for Lifetime Achievement, reads several poems from his career, and talks about his formal exploration of poetics in a conversation with Rob Casper.

In this Green Apple Books event, Kinsale Drake reads from her debut poetry collection, The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket (University of Georgia Press, 2024), and discusses how Indigenous heritage, nature, pop culture, and other influences shaped many of her poems.
 

“Time can but make it easier to be wise / Though now it seems impossible, and so / All that you need is patience.” In this Poetry Hour series reading from the Josephine Hart Poetry Foundation, actor Jeremy Irons reads “The Folly Of Being Comforted” by W. B. Yeats.

Patrick Rosal reads Paul Genega’s poem “Aliens” in this short film directed by Williams Rossa Cole and produced by the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation, in collaboration with the Academy of American Poets, for their Read By poetry film series.

“It is the Glad Season / Thunder ebbs to silence and lightning sleeps quietly in the corner.” At the annual White House Christmas celebration in 2005, the late Maya Angelou reads a poem written for the holiday and in the spirit of peace.

In this OR Books Live on Avenue C event, Mosab Abu Toha reads “If I Must Die” by the late Refaat Alareer, which appears in his posthumously published collection of poetry and prose, If I Must Die (OR Books, 2024).

In this video, Nikki Giovanni reads a selection of her poems and speaks about her life and career for the Wright Conversations series hosted by the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit and PBS Books. Giovanni died at the age of eighty-one on December 9, 2024.