Browse Reading by Year

CAConrad reads poems from The Book of Frank (2009), A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon: New (Soma)tics (2012), and Translucent Salamander: A (Soma)tic Poetry Ritual and Resulting Poems (2013), along with new and uncollected work.

Arizona's inaugural poet laureate Alberto Ríos reads at the 9th Annual Poetry Out Loud Arizona State Finals Competition.

In the inaugural reading of the Hannelore Quander-Rattee Translation Series, Geoffrey Brock presents translations of the work of Giovanni Pascoli, Patrizia Cavalli, and César Vallejo, along with original poems.

Margarita Engle delivers a lecture on poetry as a vehicle for historical exploration; she also reads poems from The Lightning Dreamer (2013) and Silver People (2014).

In this matinee performance for middle school students, Margarita Engle discusses Mountain Dog (2013), her writing process, and life in Cuba; she also reads from and discusses The Surrender Tree (2008).

Mary Szybist reads from her National Book Award-winning collection Incarnadine (2013).

Brian Blanchfield reads from his James Laughlin Award-winning book A Several World (2014). This reading was originally given with Karen Brennan and Stephen Willey.

Karen Brennan reads from little dark (2014). This reading was originally given with Brian Blanchfield and Stephen Willey.

Poetry Center Summer Resident Stephen Willey reads from "Living In," a manuscript-in-progress; the section performed here was composed during his residency. This reading was originally given with Brian Blanchfield and Karen Brennan.

In this lecture titled "The Lives of the Poems," Joshua Beckman discusses his writing process and the physical experience of his poems. Included throughout are excerpts from unpublished poems written between 2008 and 2012.

Yona Harvey performs poems from Hemming the Water (2013) as well as work unpublished at the time of the reading. This reading was originally given with Craig Santos Perez as part of the Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading Series.

Craig Santos Perez engages the audience with several performance pieces incorporating poems from his book from unincorporated territory [guma']  (2014). This reading was originally given with Yona Harvey as part of the Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading Series.

Susan Briante reads from Utopia Minus (2011) and from the manuscript of The Market Wonders (2016). This reading was originally given with Alison Hawthorne Deming.

Alison Hawthorne Deming reads essays from Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit (2014). This reading was originally given with Susan Briante.

In this lecture, Allen Crawford discusses the process of creating Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself (2014), an illustrated interpretation of Walt Whitman's iconic poem from the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass.

Benjamin Alire Sáenz reads from his short story "The Rule Maker," collected in his PEN/Faulkner Award-winning book Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club (2012).

In a lecture titled "We, the People, Percussively Agree: Where the Pocket Beats and Breaks Between Go-Go and Hip Hop," Thomas Sayers Ellis discusses the history and evolution of Go-Go and its relationship to Hip Hop, integrating sound and song clips. He finishes by performing a poem from his book The Maverick Room (2005).

In this Poetry Craft Talk titled "Conspiracy Simile: The Assassination of JFK/The Assassination of Poetry, or How I Discovered I Was Writing Cover-Story Poetics," Thomas Sayers Ellis explores the role of truth and evidence in poetry, and critically examines his own 1992 poem "Zapruder."

Robin Robertson reads poems from his books Sailing the Forest: Selected Poems (2014), A Painted Field (1997), and Hill of Doors (2013).

Kate Bernheimer reads two fairy tales, one from the Brothers Grimm and one of her own from How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales (2014).

Ander Monson reads two poems inspired by the movie Predator, along with four essays collected in Letters to a Future Lover (2015).

Willy Vlautin reads segments from the perspectives of three main characters (Freddie McCall, Nurse Pauline Hawkins, and Leroy Kervin) in his novel The Free (2014).

Sarah Kortemeier performs a series of short love poems in light of Valentine's Day at the 2015 Poetry Out Loud Regional Finals Competition.

Poet and physician Fady Joudah reads uncollected and new poems; poems from Alight (2013) and Textu (2014); and translations from the works of Mahmoud Darwish, Ghassan Zaqtan, Hussein Barghouthi, and Amjad Nasser.

Joshua Marie Wilkinson reads from Shimoda's Tavern, the final installment in his No Volta pentalogy. This reading was originally given with Ariana Reines.

Ariana Reines reads new and uncollected poems, including one written for this reading.

Simon J. Ortiz reads prose and poetry, including an excerpt from an in-progress manuscript of an epic poem and selections from Woven Stone (1992), from Sand Creek (2000), and Out There Somewhere (2002).

In this artists' talk, photographer Seamus Murphy and journalist/poet Eliza Griswold discuss their experiences in Afghanistan and the poems and photographs featured in the exhibition Shame Every Rose: Images from Afghanistan. This exhibition, which traveled to the Poetry Center courtesy of the Poetry Foundation of Chicago, featured photographs presented in pairs to echo the couplet form of the landay, an oral folk poetry created by and for the Pashtun women who span the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The landays featured in this exhibit also appear in the June 2013 issue of Poetry magazine, as well as in the anthology I Am The Beggar of The World (2014).

Ofelia Zepeda reads from Ocean Power (1995) and Where Clouds Are Formed (2008); she also reads several new poems. Some poems are performed in Tohono O'odham and English.

Elizabeth Evans reads from her novel As Good As Dead (2015).

Natalie Diaz reads poems that would appear five years later in Postcolonial Love Poem (2020). She also reads briefly from her first book, When My Brother Was An Aztec (2012).

Jen Bervin discusses Emily Dickinson's manuscripts and compositional processes, with special attention to the poet's manipulations of the physical page.

Matt Bell reads from his novel Scrapper (2015). This reading was originally given with 2015 Poetry Center Summer Resident Hieu Minh Nguyen.

Poetry Center Summer Resident Hieu Minh Nguyen reads poems from This Way to the Sugar (2014) as well as new and uncollected work. This reading was originally given with Matt Bell. 

Tarfia Faizullah reads poems from her collection Seam (2014) and from an early version of Registers of Illuminated Villages (Graywolf Press, 2018). This reading was originally given with francine j. harris as part of the Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading Series.

francine j. harris reads poems from her collection allegiance (2012) and from her upcoming manuscript play dead (Alice James Books, 2016). This reading was originally given with Tarfia Faizullah as part of the Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading Series.

Annie Guthrie reads poems from her collection the good dark (2015) and from a manuscript titled let x (be rogue). This reading was originally given with Richard Siken.

Richard Siken reads poems from his collection War of the Foxes (2015). This reading was orginally given with Annie Guthrie. 

Laynie Browne reads poetry from her collections Lost Parkour Ps(alms) (2014), Practice (2015), and Scorpyn Odes (2015), as well as uncollected work. 

Paul Hurh provides an introduction to Edgar Allan Poe as literary critic, drawing attention to the famous writer's caustic wit and analytical innovations.

Mark Doty reads from his collection of poetry Deep Lane (2015).

Brenda Hillman reads from her books Bright Existence (1993), Practical Water (2009), and Seasonal Works With Letters On Fire (2013), along with uncollected and new poems. 

Jerome Rothenberg performs a retrospective survey of his prolific body of work, beginning with poems written in the 1960s and continuing in chronological order. Most of the poems read here are collected in Eye of Witness: A Jerome Rothenberg Reader (2013). 

Phillip Lopate reads essays from Getting Personal (2003) and Portrait Inside My Head (2013), as well as one uncollected essay. 

Srikanth Reddy reads from a manuscript in progress titled "Underworld Lit."

Essayist and poet Erik Reece reads poems from A Short History of the Present (2009) and essays from An American Gospel: On Family, History, and the Kingdom of God (2009) as well as Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea (2016).

Srikanth Reddy delivers a talk on likeness, unlikeness, and portraiture in the works of Emily Dickinson, Pablo Picasso, and Gertrude Stein. 

Rachel Zucker reads from an unpublished manuscript tentatively titled "Sound Machine."

In this lecture, Rachel Zucker discusses risk, shame, and questions of gender and privilege in relationship to confessional poetry. 

Terrance Hayes reads from each of his published books: Muscular Music (1999), Hip Logic (2002), Wind in a Box (2006), Lighthead (2010), and How to Be Drawn (2015). He also reads recent, unpublished poems on the spectacle of violence. This reading was given as part of the Spectacular Poetics series.