Wyatt’s World: Nine Ways To Celebrate National Poetry Month with Audio, Text & Video

To celebrate the beating heart of literature, consider these multiple ways to experience poetry.

Read:

These three new or forthcoming titles are representative of the brightest voices in contemporary poetry:

• On the North Slope: Poems by Catharine Savage Brosman (Mercer University Press)
• On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths by Lucia Perillo (Copper Canyon)
• That Said: New and Selected Poems by Jane Shore (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Watch:

• Bright Star. Saturated in verse, Jane Campion’s film about Keats and Fanny Brawne is a visual and aural treasure.
• Dead Poets Society. Peter weir’s modern classic that shows how poetry can shape a life.
• HOWL. Rob Epstein’s and Jeffrey Friedman’s exploration, including some wonderful animation, of Allen Ginsberg’s iconic poem of the same name.

Listen:

Nothing serves poetry better than to be read aloud. Blackbird: an online journal for literature and the arts often presents audio recordings of poets reading their work including these gems:

• Claudia Emerson
  (don’t miss her Bawdy Song at the end of the recording)
• Kathleen Graber

A Conversation with Kate Greenstreet:

A Reading by Jake Adam York and Kathleen Graber:

A Reading by Kathleen Graber and Jean Valentine:

(For more info, see the page on Kathleen Graber’s poetry)

• Philip Levine