Poets & Writers Theater

“When you’re sick, the act of living is more act than living.” Meghan O’Rourke reads from her book The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness (Riverhead Books, 2022) and discusses how the book changed as her illness changed in this virtual event with Jonathan M. Adler for the Harvard Radcliffe Institute’s Book Talks series.

“I should share with you that I did not intend to be a fiction writer, I did not intend to write a historical novel…I did intend to always, however, tell the truth,” says Min Jin Lee about writing her novel Pachinko (Grand Central Publishing, 2017), which has been adapted into a television series, in this 2018 reading and conversation with Claire Messud at Harvard University.

“Quiet thinking is like a current in the sea and moves freely until it’s disturbed by its own voice, and then it becomes a music each individual sings when speaking. This is what we hear when we hear Ilya read,” says poet Fanny Howe introducing Ilya Kaminsky at this 2018 reading of his poetry collection Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press, 2019) at Harvard University’s Woodberry Poetry Room.

In this 2015 reading at Harvard University’s Woodberry Poetry Room, poet Jackie Wang introduces Bhanu Kapil, who reads from her book Ban en Banlieue (Nightboat Books, 2015), and Fred Moten, who reads from his collection The Feel Trio (Letter Machine Editions, 2014).

“All street life to a certain extent starts fair // Sometimes with a spiritual memory even,” reads Tongo Eisen-Martin from his poem “Kick Drum Only” in this virtual reading with poet, activist, and icon Sonia Sanchez celebrating the ninetieth anniversary of the Woodberry Poetry Room at Harvard University.

“In the summer of 1929, after completing his freshman year at Harvard, James Agee headed west to spend a few months working as a migrant farm hand,” reads Leslie Jamison from her essay collection Make It Scream, Make It Burn (Little, Brown, 2019) in this 2019 Harvard University event with writer and critic James Wood.

“A poem is an utterly free space for language,” says Kathleen Ossip in this 2017 lecture at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. “That is what makes it indispensable to me, and also what makes it political.” Ossip’s fourth poetry collection, July (Sarabande Books, 2021), is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It matters what you call a thing,” reads Solmaz Sharif from her poem “Look” in this 2017 reading and conversation with Evie Shockley for the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. For more Sharif, read “Shadows of Words: Our Twelfth Annual Look at Debut Poets” from the January/February 2017 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 2013 Woodberry Poetry Room video, Mary Ruefle reads twenty-eight short meditations from her essay collection Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures (Wave Books, 2012) with subjects including Shakespeare, Socrates, Van Morrison, the dead, hypocrisy, and loneliness. Ruefle received the 2020 Arthur Rense Poetry Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Brenda Shaughnessy reads her poem “I Have a Time Machine” and discusses the role that poetry can play in recovering from traumatic experiences for a TEDx event at Harvard University. Shaughnessy is the author of Our Andromeda (Copper Canyon Press, 2012) and So Much Synth (Copper Canyon Press, 2016).

In this Poetry in America video, hip-hop artist Nas sits down with Elisa New, professor of American Literature at Harvard University, to discuss his approach to writing and break down his lyrics. Poetry in America, created and directed by New, is a multi-platform initiative that encourages the spread of poetry through classes, conversations, and digital outreach.

“The dog kept at it, each bark, one right after the other, loud as gunshot, its face a box of jowl and jaw more massive than bloodhound.” At Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, ZZ Packer reads from and discusses her novel-in-progress, The Thousands, which chronicles the lives of black, white, and Native American families shortly after the Civil War, through Reconstruction and the Indian Campaigns in the Southwest.

"The best way to find an agent is a referral." For an event at Harvard University, Betsy Lerner, a partner with the literary agency Dunow, Carlson & Lerner, offers essential advice to writers on how to find an agent and get published. "Rock, Paper, Scissors" by Lerner, an essay on being an agent, writer, and editor, is in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"Education is no equalizer. Rather, it is the sleep that precedes the American Dream." At the Harvard Graduate School of Education's 2016 graduation ceremony, Donovan Livingston delivers a passionate spoken word poem titled "Lift Off" to his classmates as his commencement speech, which gained attention on social media.

With animation by Isaac Holland, this video features the poem “Smell” by William Carlos Williams, and is narrated by the poet. The Poetry of Perception short animation series focuses on representations of sensory perceptions and is produced for Harvard University's Fundamentals of Neuroscience course.

“I’m making an argument with my body and the ground about our bodies and the ground.” At Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Ross Gay, author of Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), discusses the implications of being a black poet who writes about flowers in a lecture entitled “A Book of Flowers.”

This video, animated by Sophie Koko Gate, features an excerpt from the poem “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman, and is narrated by Peter Blegvad. Produced for Harvard University's Fundamentals of Neuroscience course, the Poetry of Perception animated series looks to poetry to explain sensory perceptions.

Featuring the poem “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” by Emily Dickinson, narrated by Anna Martine, this video was animated by Hannah Jacobs for Poetry of Perception, a series of scientific animated short films.