Poets & Writers Theater

“It seems to me that prose, it may be lyrical, but it isn’t meant to be sung.” In this 2014 Academy of American Poets event, Edward Hirsch discusses the history and practice of poets writing prose with Toi Derricotte and Claudia Rankine.

“I pulled down a book by Gayl Jones, Eva’s Man, and I sat down and didn’t get back up until I finished it—and I felt so haunted,” says Rachel Eliza Griffiths about what inspired her third poetry collection, Mule & Pear (New Issues Press, 2011), in this conversation at the 2013 Poets Forum for the Academy of American Poets.

In this Academy of American Poets video, Rachel Zucker reads “Please Alice Notley Tell Me How to Be Old” from her poetry collection The Pedestrians (Wave Books, 2014) at the 2014 Poets Forum. Zucker’s tenth book, SoundMachine, is out today from Wave Books.

Jillian Weise reads her poems “Semi Semi Dash,” “Café Loop,” and “Poem for His Girl,” from her second collection, The Book of Goodbyes (BOA Editions, 2013), at the Academy of American Poets’ 2013 Poets Forum Awards Ceremony. Weise’s third collection, Cyborg Detective (BOA Editions, 2019), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Could prose be an act of resistance against poetry?” In this video from the Academy of American Poets’ Poets Forum 2014, Toi Derricotte, author of The Undertaker's Daughter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), discusses experiences with form in her writing.

“You’re gonna pierce the page and you’re gonna pierce infinity.” U.S. poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera discusses the art of revision at Poets Forum 2014 with Naomi Shihab Nye and C. D. Wright, as part of the Academy of American Poets’ Chancellors Conversations.

“A lot of poems for me begin in the sense of feeling annihilated in some way or another.” Idra Novey discusses her poetic beginnings at the Academy of American Poets’ 2014 Poets Forum. Her debut novel, Ways to Disappear (Little, Brown, 2016), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“There is a kind of formlessness to poetry, as much as everyone is obsessed with form.” Ken Chen, the executive director of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, talks about his personal relationship to poetry in a discussion at the Academy of American Poets’ 2013 Poets Forum. Chen is featured in “AAWW Continues the Conversation” by Arvin Temkar in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Edward Hirsch speaks about American poets and poetry abroad at the Academy of American Poets' 2013 Poets Forum. Hirsch discusses his two new books, Gabriel and A Poet's Glossary, in the September/October 2014 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. For more Hirsch, watch him on the Why We Write panel at the Poets & Writers Live event in New York City this past June.