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Write a poem that begins with the image of an animal arriving where it should not be, such as a whale in an office space or a Zebra in a suburban backyard. Allow this surreal scene to take you to unexpected places and metaphors. Is the animal an omen or is it concealing a secret? Focus on the literal and symbolic dimensions of the encounter, drawing out the scene to illuminate overlooked truths, inner stirrings, and the quiet absurdities of the world around you.
The author of Ocean of Clouds (Knopf, 2025) considers the benefits of planning elements of a poem before its composition.
In this 60 Minutes interview, Margaret Atwood speaks about her response to book banning, her new memoir, Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts (Doubleday, 2025), and why she says the popularity of her novel The Handmaid’s Tale is “not due to me or the excellence of the book. It’s partly the twists and turns of history.”
In “Man Ray: When Objects Dream,” a new survey exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among the many works on display are over fifty of the artist’s “rayographs,” photograms made in the early twentieth century by placing objects on or near light-sensitive photo paper that is then exposed to create dramatically silhouetted images with high contrast. In these works, everyday objects—a comb, bottle, lightbulb, eggbeater, key, and wrench—become defamiliarized through Man Ray’s manipulation of placement and movement, capturing what poet Tristan Tzara described as the moment “when objects dream.” Browse through some of the rayographs and select one image that particularly resonates with you. Compose a poem that imagines the dreams in your chosen image. In your deciphering of the objects, ask yourself what do they dream?
“It can take days, months, years for me to know when notes pass into the arena of poem or story.” —Devon Walker Figueroa, author of Lazarus Species
In this event hosted by City Lights Bookstore, Harryette Mullen reads from her latest poetry collection, Regaining Consciousness (Graywolf Press, 2025), and talks about how her poetics remain playful even in the face of disaster in a conversation with Tonya M. Foster.
The author of Ocean of Clouds (Knopf, 2025) reflects on the practice of poetry as one of both composition and listening.
“Avoid movement on roofs, between buildings, and near windows. / Do not stand where you will stand out.” In Carolyn Forché’s poem “On Being Watched From Above,” published in the New Yorker and forthcoming in the anthology I Witness: An Anthology of Documentary Poetry (Wesleyan University Press, 2026) edited by Kwoya Fagin Maples and Erin Murphy, she draws from official Territorial Defense text to write a documentary poem that, void of specific names and places, reflects the horrors of contemporary warfare and surveillance technology. Taking a cue from the imperative and direct language in Forché’s poem, write your own poem that expresses sentiments around society’s increasing use of surveillance and monitoring. In an era in which these modes are oftentimes presented as serving a greater good, what might be overlooked about the costs to our ways of life?
In this virtual reading and celebration, Poets & Writers Magazine features editor India Lena González introduces the 2025 cohort of “5 Over 50” debut authors: Princess Joy L. Perry, author of This Here Is Love (Norton, 2025); Vishwas R. Gaitonde, author of On Earth as It Is in Heaven (Orison Books, 2025); Yael Valencia Aldana, author of Black Mestiza (University Press of Kentucky, 2025); Lauren K. Watel, author of Book of Potions (Sarabande Books, 2025); and Jennifer Eli Bowen, author of The Book of Kin: On Absence, Love, and Being There (Milkweed Editions, 2025).
In this episode of the Fashion Neurosis podcast hosted by Bella Freud, Ocean Vuong speaks about how the Japanese concept of negative space, ma, influences his approach to the line in both prose and poetry, and why he wants to write eight books in total by the end of his career.
