Poet, novelist, and biographer Brad Gooch discusses the life and work of Persian poet and Sufi mystic Rumi. Author of the new biography Rumi’s Secret, Gooch unearths the mystery behind the legendary poet and his devotion to a “religion of love.” Gooch will read Rumi’s poems, along with his co-translator Maryam Mortaz. Join Gooch and Mortaz as they decode the life of one of the most enigmatic poets of the last eight centuries.

Join us for an intimate discussion about the art of poetry, featuring four very different poetic voices from Europe – Elena Alexieva 
from Bulgaria and the author of Ladder on the Heart and Face of Killer Angel; Ann Cotten whose poetry plays with perspective, an intrinsic part of her poetic process; Immanuel Mifsud who sees similarities between the way his own life is evolving and that of a fish in an aquarium; and Krisztina Tóth whose poetry deals in an emphatic, reflected and sometimes ironic way with ev

Join us for a reading and discussion of devotional poetry gleaned across expanses of time and geography with Ravi Shankar, Drunken Boat’s founding editor. Clare Cavanagh reads new work and discusses the articulation of spirit in the Eastern European tradition and the role translation plays. Ellen Doré Watson reads and discusses her translations of the Brazilian poet Adélia Prado. Patty Crane discusses the mysticism at the edges of poet Tomas Tranströmer’s work.

Archana Venkatesan, Rafiq Kathwari, and Ravi Shankar engage in a discussion concerning the poetics of Bhakti, the Sanskrit word meaning “to participate in, to share in, and to have love and devotion for.” Together, they examine Indian art and spirituality, spanning the linguistic worlds of Tamil and Urdu literature, and how it manifests in their own work in translation. Join Poets House as we unpack the complex prosody, rich cultural history, and rhetorical nuance of Indian verse.

Rigoberto González continues to change the landscape of American literature through his groundbreaking poetry, prose, and scholarship, providing readers with a redocumentation of our shared cultural memory. Join us for a conversation with González followed by celebratory readings from Eduardo Corral, Hannah Ensor, U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, Saeed Jones, Erika Sanchez, Elisabet Velasquez, and Vickie Vertiz.

Poet Jericho Brown, author of The New Testament, examines male beauty, immanent violence, and the necessity of sin versus the desire for redemption in a world marked and tormented by racial tensions and religious traditions.

Steve Zeitlin, founding director of the nonprofit cultural center City Lore, presents The Poetry of Everyday Life, stories from everyday citizens who transform the streets of New York City and its daily occurrences into poetry. In his talk, Zeitlin urges us to break down the barriers between our everyday selves and our creative selves, and choose the creative life.

“We’d fled the norm for women then, because to live it would have been a kind of death,” writes Hettie Jones in Love, H, a selection from the forty-year correspondence between poet Jones and sculptor Helene Dorn. Revealing the intimacy of lifelong friends, these letters explore the battlegrounds of women’s rights, tenants’ rights, marriage, motherhood, and a shared past that kept the two irrevocably connected in the Beat bohemia of the 1960s.

Join us as we pay tribute to the life and work of acclaimed poet, psychoanalyst, and former opera singer Cynthia Macdonald (1928-2015), known for her humor and her ability to draw poetry from the strange and grotesque. Poets Rosellen Brown, Mark Doty, Edward Hirsch, Phillip Lopate, and Jennifer Macdonald, among others read her work.

Weighing the work of Thylias Moss, Frank Ocean, Robin Coste Lewis, and George Moses Horton, among others, against Thomas Jefferson’s claim in Notes on The State of Virginia that, “among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry,” poet and scholar Joshua Bennett explores the politics of black love throughout the African diasporic literary tradition.