Poets & Writers Theater

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 2024 Writers on Writing event hosted by the Newberry Library and StoryStudio Chicago, Hanif Abdurraqib and Eve L. Ewing discuss their literary careers, the craft of writing, and how they tackle the complexities of art and activism.

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.

In this event hosted by the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College, Evie Shockley reads a selection of new poems, as well as some from her latest poetry collection, suddenly we (Wesleyan University Press, 2023), and discusses her vision for solidarity in these times in a conversation with Yona Harvey.

In this episode of Tightwires with host Hiba Tahir, poet Patrycja Humienik talks about navigating grad school and writing, identity, and her debut collection, We Contain Landscapes (Tin House, 2025), which is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this event hosted by the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, poet and translator Sawako Nakayasu reads from her books Some Girls Walk Into the Country They Are From (Wave Books, 2020) and Pink Waves (Omnidawn, 2023), and talks about the creative repetition inherent to translation and her relationship to improvisational forms in music and dance.

“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.

“Poetry is a musical accident.” Fred Moten reads a selection of poems that appear in his collection The Little Edges (Wesleyan University Press, 2016) for this 2024 Silo City Reading series event with musician Brandon Lopez.

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.

Hala Alyan reads her poem “Light Ghazal,” which appears in her fifth poetry collection, The Moon That Turns You Back (Ecco, 2024), in this short film directed by Jake McAfee and produced by the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation, in collaboration with the Academy of American Poets, for their Read By poetry film series.

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 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.

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.