Poets & Writers Theater

In this Poetry.LA interview, Lee Herrick speaks with Lynne Thompson about his appointment as California’s tenth poet laureate and reads a selection of poems from his books, including his latest collection, Scar and Flower (Word Poetry Press, 2019).

“I’m no moaning bluet, mountable / linnet, mumbling nun. I’m / tangible, I’m gin. Able to molt / in toto, to limn.” In this short film, Paisley Rekdal, who served as the Utah state poet laureate from 2017 to 2022, recites her poem “Self-Portrait as Mae West Anagram” for the Utah Division of Arts and Museums.

“I’m carrying this for America, but for Indigenous peoples in particular,” says Joy Harjo about what it means to be the first Native American to serve as the poet laureate of the United States in this 2019 PBS NewsHour interview with Jeffrey Brown. A Q&A with Harjo about her new memoir, Poet Warrior (Norton, 2021), appears in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I consider myself essentially a storyteller who’s chosen the genre of poetry.” Lynne Thompson, author of Start With a Small Guitar (What Books Press, 2013) and Beg No Pardon (Perugia Press, 2007), speaks about family stories and how she came to poetry after a career in law with Mariano Zaro for the Poetry.LA interview series. Thompson is the 2021 poet laureate of Los Angeles.

“There are some stones that open in the night like flowers / Down in the red graveyard where Bessie haunts her lovers.” In this video, Jackie Kay, national poet laureate of Scotland, reads her poem “The Red Graveyard” about her connection to American blues singer Bessie Smith. Kay’s biography Bessie Smith is forthcoming in February from Faber.

In this video, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet and translator Robert Hass reads “Okefenokee: A Story,” “Pertinent Divagations Toward an Ode to Inuit Carvers,” and other poems from his book Summer Snow (Ecco, 2020) at the 2019 Sewanee Writers’ Conference in Tennessee. The book, Hass’s seventh poetry collection, is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I was a very sleepy student until we started reading Ted Hughes...and I just woke up.” Simon Armitage talks to the U.K. Government Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport about what first drew him to poetry and why the medium has only grown more important in recent years. Armitage was named the twenty-first U.K. poet laureate.

“Words carry weight, lots of weight. Words can drown us, and words can save us.” Jaki Shelton Green, who was recently named North Carolina’s tenth poet laureate, reads from her poem “From Whence I Enter” at Christ School in Asheville, North Carolina. Green is the state’s first African American poet laureate.

In this 2009 interview with poet Elizabeth Spires, former U.S. poet laureate Donald Hall reads poems and speaks about the writing life. For more Hall, read “Turning Time Around: A Profile of Donald Hall” by contributor John Freeman from the November/December 2014 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. Hall passed away on June 23, 2018 at the age of eighty-nine.

Bianca Stone talks to Vermont poet laureate Chard deNiord for Poets Speak about her poetry, life with her family in Vermont, and her work restoring the house of her late grandmother, poet Ruth Stone. Bianca Stone’s third poetry collection, The Möbius Strip Club of Grief (Tin House Books, 2018), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Adrian Matejka reads “Battle Royale,” “Prize Fighter,” and other poems from his third collection, The Big Smoke (Penguin Books, 2013), which focus on the life of Jack Johnson, the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion. Matejka is the new poet laureate of Indiana, succeeding Shari Wagner.

"Let us gather and be / silent together like stones / glittering in sunlight..." Marjory Wentworth, the poet laureate of the state of South Carolina, reads "Holy City," a poem dedicated to the lives lost at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina one year ago.

“To walk down the streets in the Bay Area is really to walk through a dystopia,” says San Francisco poet laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin about the rapid gentrification of his native city as he discusses how poetry serves as a tool for revolution in this installment of PBS NewsHour’s “Brief But Spectacular” series.

“I could say grace was a woman with time on her hands, or a white buffalo escaped from memory. But in that dingy light it was a promise of balance,” reads Joy Harjo from her poem “Grace” in this 2019 reading at the offices of the Academy of American Poets.

In this 2014 video for the Library of Congress, Natasha Trethewey delivers the final lecture of her second term as U.S. poet laureate speaking on the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and the major victories of the civil rights movement, as well as reflecting on how these events cross with her own personal history and laureateship.

"The mind must / set itself up / wherever it goes..." So begins the poem "New Rooms" by Kay Ryan from her collection, Erratic Facts (Grove Press, 2015). Ryan is a former U.S. poet laureate, Pulitzer Prize-winner, and recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" grant.

Oregon's poet laureate Peter Sears introduces his project Expanding Voices, which aims to provide more opportunities for poets in Oregon from diverse global communities to share their work and heritage.

The next poet laureate, Philip Levine, who will succeed W. S. Merwin when he takes over the post in October, reads a selection of his poems, including "What Work Is."