Poets & Writers Theater

“My bones are happy / inside my skin; my fingers / are snapping.” Joyce Sutphen’s poem “Morning Walk” is featured in this Motionpoems short film directed by Zack Grant and starring Debra Magid.

“We hid in the trees and when we ran out of trees we hid in houses made out of trees and / when we / ran out of houses we hid in skyscrapers made out of steel and concrete...” This Motionpoems short film, featuring Jackson Holbert’s poem “Fable,” is directed by Žanete Skarule and stars Emma Bobrova Lourié.

“Six boys, a calf’s tongue each, one task…” Dom Bury’s poem “The Opened Field,” which won the 2017 National Poetry Competition, is interpreted by filmmaker Helmie Stil for this Motionpoems film created in collaboration with the Poetry Society.

“Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine / in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways...” This Motionpoems short film by Anais LaRocca features Maggie Smith’s title poem from her third collection, Good Bones (Tupelo Press, 2017).

“We are // more vulnerable / by far // than is realized / by even our // least sung, / furthest flung, // and most / compromised.” This Motionpoems short film directed by Calum Macdiarmid features a poem written by Motionpoems founder Todd Boss, the first in a series that specifically speaks to a pandemic-ridden world which was commissioned by the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Center for the Art of Medicine.

“It looked like a pancake, / but it was creation flattened out— / the fist of God on a head of wheat.” This Motionpoems short film, directed by Dan Sickles, features the titular poem from Melissa Studdard’s debut collection, I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast (Saint Julian Press, 2014).

“Each winter a new storm bent on our shoreline and damage / bloomed wild. When the neighbors left, we stayed / watching the seawall recede stone by stone.” Meghann Plunkett’s poem “South County” is featured in this Motionpoems short film directed by Kenneth Kegley.

“What streams of light might escape me and reveal / about the things I collect and hide...” This Motionpoems film directed by Tash Tung features Natalie Diaz’s poem “Cranes, Mafiosos and a Polaroid Camera,” which was first published in Spillway and will be included in her second collection, Postcolonial Love Poem, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in March 2020. 

“It wasn’t fair that fish could see color, / and whales could not, but I was okay: I loved my new body. / I don’t know what kind of whale I was. In the ocean / there were no mirrors.” Emily Jungmin Yoon’s poem “The Transformation,” which appears in her debut collection, A Cruelty Special to Our Species (Ecco, 2018), has been adapted into a Motionpoems film directed by Malin Sandberg. 

“I come from the fire city / fire came and licked up our houses, lapped them up like they were nothing / drank them like the last dribbling water...” This Motionpoems short film, directed by Daniel Daly and starring Khadija Shari, features Eve L. Ewing’s poem “I come from the fire city.” from her debut collection, Electric Arches (Haymarket Books, 2017). 

“In the beginning we were one blood. / Then the body, stem of thorns, grew / its disagreement from the inside / out.” In this Motionpoems film directed by Tom Speers, Peter LaBerge’s poem “Boy Saint” is narrated by Michael McElhatton. LaBerge is the editor in chief of the Adroit Journal and the author of the chapbook Makeshift Cathedral (YesYes Books, 2017).

“I am begging: Let me be lonely but not invisible.” This Motionpoems film directed by Mohammed Hammad features Natalie Diaz’s poem “American Arithmetic,” which appeared in the anthology Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation (Penguin Books, 2017) edited by John Freeman.

“They await counterintelligence / transmissions from our laptops / and our blue teeth, await word / of humanity’s critical mass, / our ripening.” Kyle Dargan’s poem “The Robots Are Coming” is brought to life in this animated Motionpoems film by Julia Iverson. Dargan’s new poetry collection, Anagnorisis (TriQuarterly Books, 2018), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“If there are fewer stars now / than when I was a child, / I can’t say / which are missing, / who was the last to see them.” Maggie Smith’s poem “Small Shoes” is adapted into a short film by director Kate Dolan for Motionpoems. Smith is the author of the poetry collection Good Bones (Tupelo Press, 2017), the title poem of which went viral on social media after it was first published online in the literary journal Waxwing.

“What are you? Where are you from? / I say, California, / but that’s not what they are looking for...” This Motionpoems film is an adaptation of Tiana Clark’s poem “The Ayes Have It,” directed by Savanah Leaf and narrated by Malina Tirrell. Clark is the author of I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018).

This Motionpoems film, presented by Button Poetry, is an adaptation of Cortney Lamar Charleston’s poem “How Do You Raise a Black Child?” directed by Seyi Peter-Thomas and produced by Station Film, in partnership with Cave Canem. Charleston is the author of the poetry collection, Telepathologies (Saturnalia Books, 2017).

“Every time you choose wrong. Blame it on empire.” Gary Jackson’s poem “Tryouts” from his debut collection, Missing You, Metropolis (Graywolf Press, 2010), is animated by Victor Newman and narrated by Chuck Johnson for Motionpoems.

“In between, your mind is full of trees. / And it’s quite dark despite the moon.” This short film of Laura Kasischke’s poem “This Is Not a Fairytale” was created by Laurent Barthelemy and Shizuka Kusayanagi for Motionpoems. Kasischke’s most recent collection, Where Now (Copper Canyon Press, 2017), is longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award in poetry.

“Once you can identify dehumanization, just breath can make a brick cage clumsy.” This short film for Motionpoems is an adaptation of Cynthia Manick's poem “Things I Carry Into the World” featuring four poets from Urban Word NYC: Esther Aloba, Nkosi Nkululeko, Makayla Posely, and Trace DePass.

"Nothing is so beautiful as a poem / except maybe a nightingale, / thinks the poet writing about death..." A poem from Kim Addonizio's collection My Black Angel: Blues Poems and Portraits (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2014) is brought to life in this Motionpoems film by Thomas Bryan Michurski.