Poets & Writers Theater

“To make ancestors whole is to imagine, collectively, publicly, who they were and what their experiences were like.” In this New York Public Library event, former Cullman Center fellow and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Gregory Pardlo discusses the themes within his latest poetry collection, Spectral Evidence (Knopf, 2024), and talks about interrogating the present-day erasure of Black history in a conversation with Imani Perry.

In celebration of Walt Whitman’s bicentennial birthday on May 31 of 2019, Brooklyn residents—including Mahogany L. Browne, Jason Koo, Gregory Pardlo, Ben Purkert, and Brooklyn poet laureate Tina Chang—recite his 1856 poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” from Leaves of Grass in various neighborhoods and libraries throughout the borough. This video was produced by the Brooklyn Public Library.

“I was born passing / off the problem of the twentieth century: I was born.” In this 2016 video, Gregory Pardlo reads “Written By Himself” from his Pulitzer Prize–winning poetry collection, Digest (Four Way Books, 2014), accompanied by the Finnish jazz combo Hot Heros at the Annikki Poetry Festival in Finland. For a writing prompt inspired by this poem, visit The Time Is Now.

Gregory Pardlo talks about the difference between writing poetry and creative nonfiction, and the universality of storytelling in this interview with Rich Fahle at the 2018 AWP Annual Conference & Book Fair in Tampa. Pardlo’s debut memoir, Air Traffic: A Memoir of Ambition and Manhood in America (Knopf, 2018), is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. 

"I was born in minutes in a roadside kitchen a skillet / whispering my name." Gregory Pardlo speaks with PBS NewsHour's Jeffrey Brown about his life and his poetry collection Digest (Four Way Books, 2014), which won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.