ekphrasis

Kathleen Fraser reads from her collections What I Want (1974) and New Shoes (1978). She also reads an unpublished poem she wrote while staying in the Poet's Cottage.

Steve Orlen reads from Permission to Speak (1978) and A Place at the Table (1981).

As part of the Next Word series, Philip Jenks reads from his first two books and from the chapbook How Many of You Are You? (2006). He opens and closes the reading with two poems that would go on to be collected in colony collapse metaphor (2014). This performance was originally given with Akilah Oliver and Brandon Shimoda.

In this reading, originally given with Joni Wallace, Mary Jo Bang reads poems that would go on to be collected in The Last Two Seconds (2015) as well as a segment from her translation of "Canto III" of Dante's Inferno (2012).

Denise Levertov reads from her collection Evening Train (1992), mixing in several poems from A Door in the Hive (1989). She also reads poems that would later appear in Sands of the Well (1996). Longing—for the past, for human connection, for an end to atrocities committed by the United States military—plays a prominent role in the poems Levertov reads.

Deborah Bernhardt performs poems from her book Echolalia (2006). This reading was originally given with Catherine Wing and Sawako Nakayasu as part of the Next Word in Poetry Series.

Terry Tempest Williams reads excerpts from a manuscript later published as Leap: A Traveler in the Garden of Delights (2000).

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

Luci Tapahonso reads from her collections Seasonal Woman (1982) and A Breeze Swept Through (1987), beginning with a piece that combines spoken poetry with song.

Author and illustrator Faye Kicknosway reads poems from her book The Cat Approaches (1978); she also reads from a manuscript that would eventually become the Pulitzer Prize–nominated Who Shall Know Them? (1985), a series of ekphrastic poems engaging with Walker Evans's famed photographs of life during the Great Depression. This reading was originally given alongside readings by Alan Feldman and Linda Gregg.

Timothy Donnelly reads primarily from his fourth collection, Chariot (2023), choosing poems that look to both history and daily life as they consider the human experience of time and perception. He also reads from his third collection, The Problem of the Many (2019), and shares one new, unpublished poem.