Watch 5:06
To Arizona’s first poet laureate, ‘the border is what joins us’
Across his life, Alberto Rios has seen enormous changes throughout the U.S.-Mexico border region, and its culture and language have shaped him as a writer. Now as Arizona's first poet laureate, Rios has a platform for his "poems of public…
The homeland left behind, captured in a poem
For Shauna Barbosa and other poets of the Cape Verdean diaspora, the longing for a far-away home is an important theme.
Watch 3:20
This poet wants brown girls to know they’re worthy of being the hero and the author
For girls who didn't grow up seeing themselves as the main characters of books, award-winning poet Elizabeth Acevedo wants them to know that their stories are just as important as any other. Acevedo shares her Brief but Spectacular take on…
This poet imagines black victims of police violence ‘alive someplace better’
Danez Smith sees another life for the black victims of police violence: at last living in a world where blackness is celebrated and “everything/is a sanctuary & nothing is a gun.”…
Dorothy Barresi's “What We Did While We Made More Guns” examines Americans’ anxieties and moral uncertainties in poems on international torture, war and police brutality.
We are more connected than ever, but poet Matthew Siegel finds it’s made communication and knowing our own feelings more difficult.
Feminist poetry is flourishing -- particularly for women of color.
Javier Zamora began writing poetry as a teenager after a wave of national protests over immigration reform. Zamora’s poems piece together the strained but inherent connection between the U.S. and El Salvador, and aim to shed light on the immigrant…
For artists who are both New Yorkers and Puerto Ricans, the concept of identity is fluid and complicated.
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