Poets & Writers Theater

“I am afraid / that the mouths I feed will turn against me / will refuse to swallow in the silence / I am warning them to avoid.” Audre Lorde reads her poem “Blackstudies,” which appears in her book New York Head Shop and Museum (Broadside Press, 1974), in this video from the Poetry Center’s American Poetry Archives collection at San Francisco State University.

In this 1974 episode of Day at Night, a public television interview series hosted by James Day and restored by CUNY TV, Christopher Isherwood shares memories of the poet W. H. Auden and discusses his years in Berlin, which inspired his 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin. Isherwood on Writing: The Complete Lectures in California (University of Minnesota Press, 2022) edited by James J. Berg is included in our Best Books series.

James Baldwin’s 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk has been adapted into a feature film directed by Barry Jenkins. Starring Stephan James, Regina King, and KiKi Layne, the film follows a young woman in 1970s Harlem attempting to prove her fiancé’s innocence when he is arrested for a crime he didn’t commit.