Poets & Writers Theater

In this Poetry.LA video, Lynne Thompson, author most recently of Blue on a Blue Palette (BOA Editions, 2024), and Séamus Isaac Fey, author of the debut collection, decompose (Not a Cult, 2024), read from their work and speak about playing with poetic form and organizing poetry manuscripts.

Jan-Henry Gray talks about recipe poems and the structural parallels between poetry and cooking in this short film by Talia Sadie Feder. Gray’s debut poetry collection, Documents (BOA Editions, 2019), is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“There are days we live / as if death were nowhere / in the background from joy / to joy to joy, from wing to wing,” reads Li-Young Lee from his poem “From Blossoms,” included in his debut collection, Rose (BOA Editions, 1986), for this installment of Poetry Breaks, a series created by Leita Luchetti in the 1980s and 1990s presented in partnership with the Academy of American Poets.

“Listen to me. I am telling you / a true thing. This is the only kingdom.” In this installment of Ours Poetica, a series produced by the Poetry Foundation in collaboration with Complexly, chef and author of Salt Fat Acid Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking Samin Nosrat reads Aracelis Girmay’s poem “Elegy.”

“The next time you stop speaking, / ask yourself why you were born,” reads Naomi Shihab Nye from her poem “Separation Wall” in this episode of Ours Poetica, a series produced by the Poetry Foundation in collaboration with Complexly.

“This is a woman, whose great-great-grandmother was a slave from the West African Kingdom of Dahomey, now the Republic of Benin. A woman who went on to be one of the most celebrated artists of her lifetime,” narrates Janice Harrington in this mini-documentary “Lucille Clifton: A Poet’s Life and Legacy,” produced by BOA Editions and Hunger Media.

“To me, it always comes back to, ‘What are the real questions that I want to ask through the piece?’ And then it becomes an act, not so much of representation...but it’s more a matter of discovery.” In this 2019 episode of The Poetry Vlog, Chen Chen reads the titular poem from his collection, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), and discusses the process of expressing vulnerability authentically on the page. For more Chen, read his series of Craft Capsule essays.

“I want to say I was waiting but I don’t know what I was waiting for.” In this video, Barbara Jane Reyes reads from her poetry collection Letters to a Young Brown Girl (BOA Editions, 2020) for the Well-RED reading series, presented in partnership with Poetry Center San José at Works/San José community art and performance center. The collection is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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.

“Perhaps the butterflies are mute because / no one would believe their terrible stories.” In this interview for the Poetry.LA series, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo speaks about late night talk shows, immigration interviews, the PechaKucha format, and reads from his debut poetry collection, Cenzontle (BOA Editions, 2018), which won the 2017 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize.

Holes in the Mountain is a poetry film by Kai Carlson-Wee, shot during a freight-hopping trip from Oakland, California to Portland, Oregon in 2014. Carlson-Wee’s debut poetry collection, Rail, is forthcoming from BOA Editions in April 2018.

“A single book can be a community.” In this video, Craig Morgan Teicher responds to the question, “What is your ideal reading experience?” His third poetry collection, The Trembling Answers (BOA Editions, 2017), is featured in Page One in the May/June 2017 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Maybe he will be the boy who studies stars. / Maybe he will be (say it) / the boy on the coroner's table / splayed & spangled / by an officer's lead as if he, too, weren't made / of a trillion glorious cells & sentences. Trying to last.” Aracelis Girmay reads an excerpt from her new collection, The Black Maria (BOA Editions, 2016), at the 2016 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.

"Whole years will be spent, underneath these impossible stars / when dirt's the only animal who will sleep with you..." Aracelis Girmay reads her poem, "Kingdom Animalia," for the Page Meets Stage reading series in 2013. Her new poetry collection, The Black Maria (BOA Editions, 2016), is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Still winter. Snowing, still. Can it even be called action, this / patience…” Chen Chen reads from his debut poetry collection, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), and discusses his writing with Lisa Grove for the Poetry.LA series. Chen is featured in “The Whole Self: Our Thirteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

John Gallaher reads "Your Lover, Later," a poem cowritten by G. C. Waldrep, from Your Father on the Train of Ghosts (BOA Editions, 2011). Waldrep's poetry has been published in Issue 42.1 of Black Warrior Review, which is featured in Literary MagNet in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"In one house my grandfather lay dying, the smell of approaching mud keeping him alive." Ray Gonzalez, whose new poetry collection, Beautiful Wall (BOA Editions, 2015), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, reads a selection of poems at Arizona State University in 2012.

"I knew she was carrying too, / building bits of flesh that fall into the world..." Marsha de la O reads "Possum" from her new poetry collection, Antidote for Night (BOA Editions, 2015), which is featured in Page One in the current issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Iowa City's Prairie Lights bookstore hosts a reading with poets Jessica Jacobs, author of Pelvis With Distance (White Pine Press, 2015), and Nickole Brown, author of Fanny Says (BOA Editions, 2015). Brown's poetry collection is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Blessing the Boats: A Tribute to Lucille Clifton, a celebration of the late poet's life and work on the occasion of the posthumous publication of her Collected Poems by BOA Editions, was held on February 21 and featured readings by poets Sherman Alexie, Tina Chang, Toi Derricotte, Michael Dickman, Timothy Donnelly, Cornelius Eady, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Nick Flynn, Tonya Foster, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Marie Howe, Dante Micheaux, Sharon Olds, and Tracy K. Smith.