Poets & Writers Theater

“For a time I believed / myself in love with Orpheus, which only meant I loved // what I could make if I were free from what happened to my body.” In this reading from the 2022 Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam, Safia Elhillo reads “Orpheus” from her poetry collection Girls That Never Die (One World, 2022). For more from Elhillo, read her installment of our Ten Questions series.

This short film, starring Jason Goddard and directed by James Button, is an experimental take on the tale of Orpheus, the Greek poet who went to the underworld after the death of his wife Eurydice and secured her release from the dead, only to lose her because he failed to obey the condition that he must not look back at her until they had reached the world of the living.