Poets & Writers Theater

“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.

“We laugh and for one heartbeat forget to be afraid.” This short film of John Glenday’s poem “The Big Push” is inspired by James Herbert Gunn’s 1916 painting “The Eve of the Battle of the Somme.” Animated by Xin Li, the film was produced by the Poetry Society and Mosaic Films.

“Let it matter what we call a thing. / Let it be the exquisite face for at least 16 seconds. / Let me LOOK at you. / Let me look at you in a light that takes years to get here.” Listen to Solmaz Sharif read the titular poem from her debut poetry collection, Look (Graywolf Press, 2016), which is longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award in Poetry. Sharif is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet C. K. Williams delivered the Poetry Society's annual lecture at Newcastle University in the UK last summer. The seventy-five-year-old chose as his topic On Being Old, reading poems that explore his changing relationship with the great poets of history.