Poets & Writers Theater

“if you can read this / you are alive.” erica lewis reads her poem “i’m no great pretender,” which appears in her collection mahogany (Wesleyan University Press, 2023), in this poetry film produced by City Lights Booksellers & Publishers with the author.

“Heaven becomes our street’s shoulders…” In this video, Tongo Eisen-Martin reads a selection of poems at San Francisco State University’s Poetry Center. His second poetry collection, Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights Publishers, 2017), is featured in Page One in the September/October 2017 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

For the launch of the poetry and essay anthology Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin (Norton, 2016) edited by Phil Cushway and Michael Warr, devorah major reads Angela Jackson's contributions, as well as from her own work. major's new poetry collection, and then we became (City Lights Publishers, 2016), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

This video from a Revolutionary Poets Brigade event features devorah major reading selections from poems such as “emergency room visitation,” “outcry,” “neighborhood boy,” and “a poet learns sarajevo.” major’s fifth poetry collection, and then we became (City Lights Publishers, 2016), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"It is the way I breathe / through chronic terrifying ferns / through a black ungracious stoma..." For the Lunch Poems Noontime Poetry Series, Will Alexander shares from his poetry collection Compression and Purity (City Lights Publishers, 2011). Alexander is the recipient of the tenth annual Jackson Poetry Prize, an annual Poets & Writers award.

"I’m so damned literary / and at the same time the waters rushing past remind me of / nothing..." Hilary Kaplan reads Frank O'Hara's "Poem en Forme de Saw" from Lunch Poems, first published in 1964 by City Lights Publishers. Angélica Freitas's debut collection, Rilke Shake (Phoneme Media, 2015), translated from the Portuguese by Kaplan, won the 2016 Best Translated Book Award in poetry.