What Listening Has Taught Me: The Smallest Part of Your World
Oral historian Nyssa Chow considers how small routines and rituals tell larger stories.
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Genre: Spoken Word
Asian American Literature Festival: Bamboo Ridge Press
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In this 2024 Asian American Literature Festival event, hosts Cathy Song and Misty-Lynn Sanico introduce a reading from Bamboo Ridge Press authors Donald Carreira Ching, Scott Kikkawa, Wing Tek Lum, and Tamara Wong-Morrison.
The Written Image: Ghost(ed) Notes
Christine Sun Kim’s art practice uniquely melds different mediums with ASL to address her experience as a Deaf individual in a hearing-centric world, prompting viewers to reflect on accessibility and ableist exclusion.
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A Prayer by Amal Kassir
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“We are afraid like all mothers.” In this Write About Now Poetry video, spoken word artist and activist Amal Kassir reads her poem “A Prayer” for a live audience.
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What We Carry by Amanda Gorman
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In this video from The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Amanda Gorman reads her poem “What We Carry,” which appears in her debut collection, Call Us What We Carry (Viking, 2021), set to world-renowned cellist Jan Vogler’s performance of “Suite for Violoncello No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007: I. Prélude” by Johann Sebastian Bach.
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An All-Purpose Product by Patricia Smith
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In this Button Poetry video, Patricia Smith reads her poem “An All-Purpose Product,” which appears in her award-winning collection Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah (Coffee House Press, 2012), for the 2016 Get Lit Classic Slam in Los Angeles.
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A Few Things by Rudy Francisco
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“I know a few things about my body, it’s the only one that I have and it becomes everything I say it is.” In this Button Poetry video, Rudy Francisco reads his poem “A Few Things,” which appears in his collection Excuse Me as I Kiss the Sky (Button Poetry, 2023), at Icehouse in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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Summer / New York City
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“Is it any wonder our lips feel so lonesome these long evenings?” Phil Kaye reads his poem “Summer / New York City,” which appears in his collection Date & Time (Button Poetry, 2018), in this 2021 event with accompaniment by The Westerlies at Little Island in New York City.
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Ramya Ramana on Forgiveness
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Author, lyricist, and former New York City youth poet laureate Ramya Ramana discusses and reads a piece about forgiveness in this video for PBS Newshour’s “Brief But Spectacular” series. “Forgiveness is a doorway. A garden of curses spill from her lips and the city inside me crumbles. I tell myself, all poison has once been poisoned too,” reads Ramana.
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CAConrad Reads Jack Spicer’s “For Mac”
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“A dead starfish on a beach / He has five branches / Representing the five senses / Representing the jokes we did not tell each other.” CAConrad reads Jack Spicer’s poem “For Mac” in this short film directed by Matthew Thompson and produced by the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation, in collaboration with the 92nd Street Y, for their Read By poetry film series.
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