Poets & Writers Theater

For PBS NewsHour, U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith recommends recent poetry titles, including Look (Graywolf Press, 2016) by Solmaz Sharif, who was featured in “Shadows of Words: Our Twelfth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in Poets & Writers Magazine, and Lessons on Expulsion (Graywolf Press, 2017) by Erika L. Sanchez, who was profiled in “First” by Rigoberto González in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Erika L. Sánchez reads her poem “Forty-Three,” which reflects on the 2014 abduction of forty-three students in Guerrero, Mexico, as Ashley Rockwood interprets the poem through dance for this video produced in partnership with Chicago magazine. The poem is from Sánchez’s debut collection, Lessons on Expulsion (Graywolf Press, 2017), and her debut novel, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2017), is a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award in young people’s literature.

“Every day after school, the factory men yell / mamacita, /​ make noises like sucking /​ mangos.” ​Erika L. Sánchez reads the poem “Hija de la Chingada” from her debut poetry collection, Lessons on Expulsion (Graywolf Press, 2017), for the Palabra Pura bilingual reading series. The collection is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.