poetry

“For the Birds: The Birdsong Project” is an unprecedented outpouring of creativity by more than 220 music artists, actors, literary figures, and visual artists, all coming together to celebrate the joy birds bring to human lives and to emphasize the climate crisis indicators made evident by changes in bird behaviors and migration patterns.“For the Birds” is a collection of 172 pieces of new music inspired by the beauty of birdsong, performed by artists from across the musical spectrum and 73 works of bird-inspired poetry, read by familiar and famous voices - like Tilda Swinton, Wendell Pierce, Regina King, Michelle Williams, Greta Gerwig, and Bobby Cannavale.The collection is curated and compiled by distinguished film and television music supervisor Randall Poster; he joins us now along with Executive producer and "For the Birds" creator Rebecca Reagan.

Three-term poet laureate Joy Harjo will be the focus of this Saturday’s Spotlight Series at Tanglewood’s Seiji Ozawa Hall in Lenox, MA at 5PM.The event is a journey celebrating creativity through acknowledgement of the ancestors of poetry and music in the story field of the first Native American U.S. Poet Laureate.Harjo offers a vivid, lyrical, and inspiring call for love and justice in an contemplation of her trailblazing life. Harjo invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. Poet Warrior is also the title of her new memoir.

On April 5, director Jamie Lloyd’s Oliver Award winning revival of “Cyrano de Bergerac” will begin performances at Brooklyn Academy of Music, having run in the West End to great acclaim. For the production, Edmund Rostand’s classic text has been newly adapted from its original French verse into English (still verse) by long-working playwriting-maestro Martin Crimp. James McAvoy embodies the title character wholly and imbues the brilliant wordsmith he plays with humor and humanity. The swagger of this Cyrano is different and the entire story feels - if not new - more urgent. The production is stealthy in its minimalism and inspiring in its palpable adoration of language.Director Jamie Lloyd and actor James McAvoy join us.

Author & Skidmore professor Susannah Mintz’s memoir interweaves the private story of a marriage coming apart with readings of John Milton's poetry and prose. She discusses her book, Love Affair in the Garden of Milton, with us this morning and through a Northshire Books Virtual Event tonight.Connected essays chart the chaos of loss and the discovery of how a writer can inhabit our emotional as well as our intellectual selves. Inflected by the principles of mindfulness. Mintz's memoir explores how we reconstruct ourselves and find our way back to meaning in the aftermath of trauma.Susannah B. Mintz is the author or coeditor of several scholarly works about disability culture and representation, life writing, and early modern literature. She is currently a professor of English at Skidmore College.

Ravi Shankar is an award-winning author and editor of more than fifteen books and chapbooks of poetry. He is the founder of Drunken Boat, one of the world’s oldest electronic journals of the arts, and has been featured in the New York Times and on BBC, NPR, and PBS NewsHour. "Correctional" dives into the inner workings of his mind and heart, framing his unexpected encounters with law and order through the lenses of race, class, privilege, and his bicultural upbringing as the first and only son of South Indian immigrants.

Pushcart Prizewinning poet Maggie Smith gained star status with her breakout bestseller “Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity and Change.” Now with “Goldenrod,” Smith returns to her original craft with a powerful collection of poems that explore parenthood, solitude, love, and memory.

Tonight on Person Place Thing: Poet, writer and educator Patricia Spears Jones. She is the editor of “The Future Differently Imagined” and the author of…

The inspiring story of activist and poet Ian Manuel, who at the age of fourteen was sentenced to life in prison. He survived eighteen years in solitary…

Roya Hakakian is a lauded Persian poet turned television producer with programs like "60 Minutes." She became well known for her memoir, "Journey from the…

It is National Poetry Month and we talk this morning with poet Jasmine Mans about her new collection: "Black Girl, Call Home." The collection explores the…