Poets & Writers Theater

“I pulled down a book by Gayl Jones, Eva’s Man, and I sat down and didn’t get back up until I finished it—and I felt so haunted,” says Rachel Eliza Griffiths about what inspired her third poetry collection, Mule & Pear (New Issues Press, 2011), in this conversation at the 2013 Poets Forum for the Academy of American Poets.

“Yes— / I am opening myself for the black-horned galaxies / where the soul hides...” In this Poets House Presents video, Rachel Eliza Griffiths reads a selection of poems from her latest collection, Seeing the Body (Norton, 2020). For more Griffiths, read her installment of Ten Questions.

“How does the elegy believe me?” This lyric art video created by Rachel Eliza Griffiths offers a peek into her new book of poems and self-portraits, Seeing the Body (Norton, 2020), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

American Stanzas: 2006–2016 is a photography and mixed media arts show presenting work by poet and visual artist Rachel Eliza Griffiths. The exhibition is sponsored by Poets House and Cave Canem Foundation.

"In the spleen, an oasis / an oasis as mirage / all my people burned / on either side of me." Listen to poet Charif Shanahan, along with Matt Petronzio, Hafizah Geter, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, and Danniel Schoonebeek read for a National Poetry Month event called Writing and Resistance, presented by MashReads and the Strand Book Store.

“In my own writing, I feel safest when I’m farthest from what I know.” Tracy K. Smith reads “Digging” by Seamus Heney, the poem she feels “invited her to start writing poetry,” and from “My God, It’s Full of Stars,” a poem she wrote about her father. This video, part of the P.O.P. series, was shot and edited by Rachel Eliza Griffiths in partnership with the Academy of American Poets.

In this P.O.P. series video, Douglas Kearney reads and discusses “Sound—Part 3 (Ostinato): All the World's Wars Commence in the Head” by Yona Harvey, and reads from “Tuesday Morning at Work.” The P.O.P. series was shot and edited by Rachel Eliza Griffiths in partnership with the Academy of American Poets.

R. A. Villanueva reads “A Brief for the Defense” by Jack Gilbert and “Mine Will Be a Beautiful Service,” a poem from his collection Reliquaria (University of Nebraska Press, 2014). This video is part of the P.O.P. series, shot and edited by Rachel Eliza Griffiths in partnership with the Academy of American Poets.

This clip of Natasha Trethewey reading on April 12 at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago as part of the Dark Room Collective Reunion Tour, was recorded by Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Read Kevin Nance's profile of the new poet laureate, "This Time, This Voice," in the current issue.

"This Dust Road: Self Portrait" is an excerpt from the final poem in Mule & Pear, the third poetry collection by Rachel Eliza Griffiths, published this month by New Issues Poetry & Prose.

In this excerpt from P.O.P. (Poets on Poetry), an ongoing documentary shot and edited by Rachel Eliza Griffiths in partnership with the Academy of American Poets, poet Carl Phillips, whose eleventh collection, Double Shadow, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2011, reads a poem and talks about a song that matches the mood of the poems he’s been writing lately.