Poets & Writers Theater

“My frugal mouth spends the only foreign words it owns. / At present, on this sleeper train, there’s nowhere to arrive.” Jenny Xie, a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award in poetry, reads “Rootless” and “Ongoing” from her debut poetry collection, Eye Level (Graywolf Press, 2018). Xie is featured in “Wilder Forms: Our Fourteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It was easy to worship obedient things.” Mario Chard reads a selection of poems from his debut poetry collection, Land of Fire (Tupelo Press, 2018) at Litquake in 2012. Karp is featured in “Wilder Forms: Our Fourteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“We live on the unanswerable, assert / that acknowledgment is inartistic, / history is regressive, and aggression / looks like no one we know…” Justin Phillip Reed reads from his debut poetry collection, Indecency (Coffee House Press, 2018), for which he won the 2018 National Book Award in poetry. Reed is featured in “Wilder Forms: Our Fourteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“What may exist between appearance, and disappearance, between sound and silence, as something that is nearly nothing…” Diana Khoi Nguyen, a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award in poetry, reads from her debut poetry collection, Ghost Of (Omnidawn Publishing, 2018). Nguyen is featured in “Wilder Forms: Our Fourteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Your buttons can’t hold all the love / rippling up the middle of your ribcage…” José Olivarez reads his poem “You Get Fat When You’re in Love” from his debut poetry collection, Citizen Illegal (Haymarket Books, 2018). Olivarez is featured in “Wilder Forms: Our Fourteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February 2019 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Fatimah Asghar, whose debut poetry collection, If They Come For Us, was published in June by One World, talks with director Sam Bailey about the motivations behind their web series Brown Girls, which the cocreators will be adapting for HBO.